How to commit Internet Suicide
Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mint
First a caveat. I love the Internet. But I’m committing Internet suicide. Puritans may argue what I’m doing doesn’t quite qualify; it’s actually putting my online presence on life support. I guess they’re right. Be that as it may, I put my actions down to one overwhelming reason. I need to be in control. The way things are, I’m not. Allow me to put that into perspective.
Ranjit Nair is chief executive at Germin8.com, a big-data analytics firm. By way of example, he told me of how companies like his get routine requests from public relations (PR) firms to mine information on where a journalist’s inclination lies. With information of that kind on hand, they know what pitch to make and to whom.
Then there are firms who ask the Internet landscape be trawled to identify people who speak well of them. Once identified, these people can be incentivized to behave as brand ambassadors.
The human resource (HR) function at large corporations now deploys trawlers to pick up as much as they can about a potential recruit. This data is used to scrutinize candidates. That is why, oftentimes, before a candidate has appeared for an interview, the interviewer’s mind is made up.
Practically everything is out there. My political affiliations, my religious beliefs, people I agree with, brands I like and dislike. “The lines between our online and offline presence have blurred,” Nair says.
These are not unusual activities. But it makes me uncomfortable. By way of analogy, he describes mob behaviour in the offline world. After an attack, they disappear into the aftermath. Contrary to public perception, in the online world, there is no anonymity. Each footprint can be tracked.
There are a few ways to look at what this means:
• Resign and accept neither privacy nor controls are in your hands.
• Be afraid and stay away.
• Get proactive and take control of your online identity.
To my mind, the first is a cop-out, the second a compromise and the third pragmatic. That is why I’ve opted for the third. The question is how do you implement it?
Step 1: Limit social media
The sound thing, Nair argues, is to accept that social media is impossible to ignore. “So, I don’t post anything I may be embarrassed to talk about in the offline world.”
But a former colleague Rohin Dharmakumar and I have a rigid stance. We chose to delete our Facebook accounts. Dharmakumar takes his privacy seriously. I find status updates, numbers of likes, comments and cute baby pictures a waste of time.
Then there’s the whole razzmatazz about LinkedIn and how it can help advance my career. While there may be some merit, I find the numbers of people who want to connect with me intimidating. Personal experience also suggests the kind of offers that have come my way on LinkedIn indicates either of two things. Recruiting firms are incompetent, or I have an incompetent resume. I’m still to come to terms with why I maintain a cursory presence on it.
As for Twitter, I don’t want to give it up because I think it is a handy tool to discover useful links from interesting people I follow. But there are tweets I’ve posted in the past I’m embarrassed to admit originated from me. To ensure it doesn’t work against me, I deploy TweetDelete (www.tweetdelete.net). This application deletes my posts from the past at intervals of my choice.
Then there is the big daddy of them all—Google Plus. It sits insidiously and I’m still to figure how the heck did I get there? But I don’t want anything to do with this networking site either. Fortunately, opting out is easy without damaging other experiences on Google.
Early adopters may have created accounts on sites that don’t exist anymore. I recommend deleting your identities from there as well. It can be tedious.http://justdelete.me is a good place to begin identifying all of where you have a presence. It offers pointers on how to get out of it. That’s also when it hits you that there are places you can’t get out of—like Pinterest. By signing up with them, you have signed away your rights to delete. You can deactivate, but your data remain on their servers.
Step 2: Create a personal website
First question: Why have a personal website?
• I don’t want to be part of masses on social media.
• I want to be in control of the impression I convey online.
• I believe in a few things, personal and professional. I want all of those values conveyed in a distinct, ad-free environment, in a voice that is uniquely mine.
• My identity ought not to be tied to my workplace. I need to future-proof myself and this is a tool I can deploy to my advantage—even if it were just to showcase my resume.
Is building a personal website intimidating? No. It isn’t.
Some research and conversations with friends in the know later, the toss-up was between WordPress (www.wordpresss.com) and SquareSpace(www.squarespace.com). I chose the latter.
Why? Think of it as the difference between Android and Apple. Android offers freedom. Apple offers convenience. But what use is the freedom if I don’t know what to do with it? I’d much rather take the convenience and get my job done.
I’m no designer or developer, neither can I afford one. I’m just a regular bloke who wants a classy site optimized for the desktop, tablet and smartphone. SquareSpace allows me do just that with drag and drop options, and a personalized domain name thrown in. Their customer support is super as well and each time I pinged them for help, they’ve responded in minutes.
WordPress is good if you have time on hand and patience to tinker. A few years ago, I may have. But right now, I don’t.
Step 3: Get a personalized email address
For much the same reasons articulated above.
Pay and get an ad-free, customized experience. I don’t want any email service provider serving me ads on the back of some algorithm analysing what kind of emails hit my inbox. Zoho Mail (www.zoho.com) is among the better ones.
After trying it out though, I settled on hosting my email on Google. This, after I had grandly announced to Dharmakumar I’m settling on Zoho. Like I said earlier, he’s big on privacy and thinks their policies less intrusive. I agree. But three things tilted my decision in favour of Google. The interface is the one I’m familiar with, I can pay in Indian currency, and the setup was easier. That said, customer support for both are outstanding. But I must confess the friendly Irish accent of the gentleman who called me from Google’s call centre in Ireland to clarify some doubts I had, which flummoxed me for a bit.
Shehkar Gupta
Shekhar Gupta's Farewell Note
Goodbye notes can be heartwarming or heartbreaking. On a rare occasion they can be both. This is one such.
It is time for me to say goodbyes at the Express -- for the second time. The first was exactly at the same time of the year in 1983 when most of you were not born yet.
I say goodbye now with joy because I leave behind a wonderfully vibrant newsroom with very good hands of home-grown leaders. And a newspaper that defines its value and power in terms of its depth, credibility and respect. There is no higher currency, no fairer denominator of a newspaper's stature.
And also a wrench precisely because we are such a fun gang, topped by a large-hearted proprietor who pretty much distributes all that the company earns back to us. As generous compensations, great working conditions, never a resource spared in pursuit of a story. No call ever to kill a story once it passes our highest and the most exacting editorial bars and filters.
I can do no better than paraphrase what Gen. Krishnaswamy Sundarji, my friend and mentor in an area of journalism that fascinated me, had said at his farewell parade when cameras caught a hint of mist in his ever-smiling eyes. He said he didn't know whether to sob or smile. Because he was leaving behind the world's finest army that God gave any human the gift of leading.
There isn't a daily newspaper in India greater than the Express. Or a greater gift that a journalist can ask for than to lead it. I have been doubly blessed. I started at the same paper as a reporter in 1977 and worked here for a full 25 years in two innings.
Leadership is its own teacher. In fact, the finest. It gives you an opportunity to learn from the many brilliant people that you have been given the honour to lead. I know, many of you by now would be tired of my three-example rule in editorial writing. Yet, here are my three leadership lessons.
First, you must have a big heart. You can be a competent manager, a powerful boss, the wealthiest owner. But never a leader without a big heart. Because there is an essential moral dimension to leadership.
Second, always connect with the universe of those you lead. In our case, it is exhilarating as, across our teams, we trawl the worlds of politics, government, economics, science, culture, cinema and sports. Even markets and advertising, our roti-dal and EMIs.
And third, find that instinct to choose the most talented and diligent, give them space, and then trust them. I confess this defies conventional logic. Or advice on your usual leadership manual's back-flap. But trust with your heart and not merely, clinically with your head. This is the one gift I take away from Viveck through a two-decade professional relationship, and a friendship that endures.
This concludes my farewell sermon. So back to myself.
When life becomes cosy for too long, you need to disrupt it. Smugness is the beginning of old age, even if you are in your teens, which I, regrettably, am not. I am embarrassed to lean on the wisdom of Neale Donald Walsh, a contemporary pop-spiritualist/philosopher so juvenile that had he been born in India, he would be a star on Aastha channel with his nutty Conversations with God. Life, he said, begins at the end of your comfort zone. I am checking him out.
In any case, I am an incorrigible reporter and thereby a terminal adventure junkie. By the way, even at the risk of being charged with crass tribalism, I shall write something more specifically for my fellow reporters at the Express. But a bit later.
I had said at my book release by Arun Shourie in Mumbai earlier this month that he taught me many things, but never to write anything short, an article, a letter, even a farewell note. So I can continue to indulge myself today as well. But you have to bring out tomorrow's paper. And I must write my first in this series -- my last at the Express -- of First Person/Second Draft -- on time. Heard that before?
I so love you all, friends, colleagues, much younger, brighter and with a great future. I am proud of you and cherish the time we spent together. I will be generally in my office until June 15. There is a fair bit of pending writing. So please be forewarned: you will still have to endure the corridor addas on my compulsive breaks from spells of writing, bare feet and all.
Postscript: One antidote to compulsive rambling is to steal a poet's lines. Let me sign off, therefore, with Gulzar, whom we all so adore...
Din dhale jahan, raat paas ho,
Zindagi ki lau, oonchi kar chalo,
Yaad aaye gar kabhi, jee udaas ho,
Meri awaz hi pehchan hai,
Gar yaad rahe...
We will always be in touch....
Shekhar
The Minimalist
Photo: Mint
At first look, I am a First World minimalist porn star—the equivalent of hippies from the mid-20th century seeking India out to find their spiritual selves and cheap pot.
—For close to a year now, I haven’t held a regular job and am on the entrepreneurial path. It allows me to do what I want to do at a time and place of my choosing.
—I’m a Mac fan boy. Yes, it is expensive when compared with Android powered tools. But minimalists appreciate good design and simplicity. To acquire both of these, we invest.
—I own less than 100 things. My wardrobe has fewer than 33 items and is dominated by grey, blue, black and white. I don’t know how these numbers were arrived at. But Zen practitioners like Leo Babauta (www.zenhabits.com) argue that these boundaries inhibit material consumption and free us to follow passion.
—As a corollary, I’m off most social media and must confess to feeling happier because there is less noise to contend with. I rarely watch television. Between my laptop, smartphone and e-book reader, there are only so many screens I can deal with.
—When I travel, all that I need fits into a backpack. I don’t shop for anything except technology. Most of my assets like books, music and information are consumed digitally. Convenient, cheaper and clutter free.
This list on what constitutes my lifestyle can expand to include every minimalist prescription. But a part of my mind argues that my minimalism and the reasons articulated above are specious. Instead, they are functions of compulsion, pragmatism and inertia. Because when I look closer, I see a conflicted soul on whom minimalism doesn’t sit easy. Think a poor boy growing in the poorer quarters of a city where only ragged people go. To him, minimalism is counter-intuitive. But as Art Garfunkel famously said in his prelude to Kathy’s Song at a live concert: “How nice poverty looks in retrospect.”
Entrepreneurship was accidental. The walls in my home are white because I don’t have to invest researching what looks best—not Zen-inspired notions of stillness. I own less because I find walking through crowded shopping aisles claustrophobic. I’d much rather my wife did it for me. I’m training for a full marathon because alcohol-driven binges and incessant smoking has taken its toll on my 41-year-old body.
I find television loud and social media littered with rubbish. I invest in technology because I’m passionate about it.
So how did I get to be a poster child who fits every cliché of this 21st century trope?
The answer came to me—in an altogether different conversation and context—from Kuldeep Datay, a Mumbai-based clinical psychologist. He told me that all behaviour is a function of something simmering deeper. Much thinking later, I concluded all of my actions were driven by a desire to unclutter my mind. Minimalism is part of that quest to focus on the essential. Because as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry writes in The Little Prince, “What is essential to the heart is invisible to the eye”.
To seek reinforcement, I sought out Gourav Jaswal, one of my contemporaries. I respect him because I think of him as a person who puts thought into what he does. After various stints in television and print, he took a call to move out of Mumbai to Goa. There, he set up Synapse, a media consulting firm.
To my mind, he could have been part of the “mainstream”. He chose to focus on a few things instead—like the quality of his life. Email and telephone interactions with him later, a few things emerged.
Lesson #1: Choose your boundary
Ours is a world where relevance (signals) is outstripped by irrelevance (noise). How measured I am when writing or conversing are things I have control over. But on television or social media, I am at the mercy of the medium or the sender. If irrelevant, this information is distracting. This is not to say all of television and social media is noise. The call I need to take is whether or not I have enough in me to wade through the noise. Much like Gourav, I don’t have it in me. Like him, I have to choose the boundaries I intend to operate within. That is one of the many reasons I quit Facebook.
As he puts it: “Can I walk into a rave club and search for a corner to have a quiet conversation? It is not just futile, but petulant to try and change the rules of an environment everyone seems to enjoy.” But, as Datay would argue, it is equally petulant to live hermit-like. You cannot divorce yourself from the world you live in either. That is why I continue to remain on Twitter and maintain a limited profile on Linkedin.
Lesson #2: Choose your place
Gourav moved out of Mumbai because he thought commute times were awful. Everybody who works at Synapse can reach home within 4 to 8 minutes on foot.
“Not living in a big city leads to missed opportunities. Like that of having the spotlight on you, the amplification prominent people, media and platforms provide. However, Indian cities provide a very stark choice. Unlike San Diego, Munich or Singapore, they impose a very specific grid upon you. Only extraordinary money and effort allows you escape that imposition,” says Gourav.
“Living as I do, there are far less things I miss than I would if I were living in Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore. I am a thousand miles away from the level of accomplishment I believe I should have,” he adds.
Gourav isn’t complaining, because “…the fact that I live in Goa accounts for a ‘fraction’ of the limitations I work with”, he says.
Lesson #3: Choose focus
Enjoyment goes hand-in-hand with intense focus. An orgasm, for instance, is unlikely to be an event people do not enjoy or during which they get distracted. This is true of a sportsperson in flow, a musician performing, or a writer absorbed in his work. To achieve the kind of focus where enjoyment is primary and everything peripheral is ignored, practice is essential. The question is, what kind of practice?
To start with, choose “attention-shifting” over “multitasking”. The problem with multitasking, says an article on the theme in The New Yorker, is that it supports multiple desires within one person at the same time. “The Web calls us constantly, like a carnival barker, and the machines, instead of keeping us on task, make it easy to get drawn in—and even add their own distractions to the mix. In short: we have built a generation of ‘distraction machines’ that make great feats of concentrated effort harder instead of easier,” says the article.
While there are various tools out there, my favourite is Rescue Time (www.rescuetime.com). While a free version is available, the premium edition costs $9 a month. Once downloaded, it works at the back-end. It allows you to define everything you need to achieve and the time you’re willing to allot. The tool allows you to block everything unnecessary. The more you let it run, the more detailed reports it generates of time spent—including reports on when you need downtime.
For instance, I now know I am most distracted mid-week on Thursdays. My attention span dips and I need downtime. Having taken that downtime, my productivity doubles on Fridays.
As the great Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius writes in his Meditations: “Is it not better to do what is necessary and no more, to limit yourself to what reason demands of a social animal and precisely in the manner reason dictates?... Most of what we say and do is unnecessary anyway; subtract all that lot, and look at the time and contentment you’ll gain.”
This article was first published by Mint. All copyrights to this piece rest with the newspaper.
Photo: Indranil Bhoumik for Mint
Life Hacks 101
One of the most compelling pieces of advice I ever heard is: What and who you are is a function of the choices you exercised in the past. What and who you will be is a function of the choices you exercise today.
Spend some time on the thought. Having done that, write a letter to your younger self. From whatever it is you have experienced until now, what advice would you give your younger self?
This is one of the exercises I ask people to do at the writing workshops I conduct. A thread that binds most notes is that everybody would rather be somebody or something else; they aren’t happy with who they are; and their letters often make for heart-breaking reading.
In asking this question of others, it was pertinent that I asked myself the same question. What can I do to live better? How can I be happier?
As geeks ask, are there Life Hacks?
Because I don’t know all of the answers, I thought it pertinent to engage in conversations with people and experiment with tools that lie at various intersections.
When I asked R. Sukumar (Suku, as he is popularly called), who edits this newspaper, if he’d allow me to document my experiments, he told me to go right ahead.
Hack#1: Find Purpose
Green light in hand, my first port of call was Amit Chandra, managing director at Bain Capital, a private equity firm. Widely known as a shy, gentle soul, I thought him and his wife Archana outliers. They devote 75% of their earnings to philanthropy.
Why, I wondered!
He asked me if I had read How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen. The question led to an engaging dialogue with him and a few others that I intend to share in another piece.
When Amit and Archana first read the book, Christensen’s questions resonated deeply.
Why is it that people who ought to be happy are unhappy?
Why do people behave unethically at work?
Why do their marriages get wrecked?
Why do their children end up delinquent?
Christensen points out that this is because most people implement the wrong “strategies”. Why? Drawing from examples of peers, students and companies he consults with, Christensen argues that this is because all of them don’t have a purpose. Not having a purpose means they don’t have the right strategy. To have the right strategy, you ought to have the right metrics in place to measure your life. In the book, Christensen talks of finding purpose and implementing the right strategies.
When Amit and Archana Chandra asked themselves questions on the back of Christensen’s framework, they went through a gut-wrenching transformation.
As a journalist, it compelled me to ask this question of a few others who are seemingly at peace with themselves. I intend to share in detail their experiences on how they found purpose in the weeks to come.
To make a start, Christensen’s talk on the theme can be viewed onmintne.ws/1jX6Fag. It is one of those rare talks that hold the potential to change how you live.
Hack #2: Find Yourself
In my earlier assignment, as part of a leadership development workshop, I found myself participating in the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Test. The way it works is simple. You’re asked some questions. There are no right or wrong answers. Based on your responses, the MBTI framework classifies you into one of 16 types.
The test done, all of us there were asked to participate in a game of cricket. Jayshree and Mangesh Kirtane of consulting firm Alchemy Management, who had administered the tests, were watching the game closely and making notes.
At the end of the game, they brought their observations to the table. The test indicated that I fit into a quadrant on the matrix called INTJ (an acronym for introversion, intuition, thinking, judgment).
Their interpretation caught me by surprise. My behaviour on the field was remarkably close to what the test predicted. I am naturally introverted, a bad loser, need closure and take on more than I ought to. But I always thought of myself as extroverted, capable of demonstrating grace when faced with adversity and fine with open-ended situations.
The outcome was at variance with what I thought of myself.
Detractors argue that the test is as flaky as rubbish peddled in Linda Goodman’sSun Signs.
To understand if that was indeed the case, I consulted Kuldeep Datay, a clinical psychologist, and Siddika Panjwani, a neuropsychologist, both of whom I had met under particularly adverse circumstances.
They told me that in their experience as counsellors, MBTI is a good tool to understand people. Without having administered it to me, Datay told me he was willing to punt that I was Type INTJ. You can take it free on various sites (likemintne.ws/1lOGlL3).
Exercise caution. There are variables at play within the matrix. Somebody who lies in the same quadrant as you do may not exhibit similar traits.
To understand why, you ought to subject yourself to a more rigorous test. There are two options here. A more detailed version of MBTI called MBTI II and the Golden Personality Test Profiler (www.talentlens.com).
I opted for the latter because it is cheaper at 1,500 as against 4,500 for the MBTI II. More importantly, Datay assured me that the results are similar. But Pearson, n, one of the world’s largest learning companies, which administers this test, has kept it cheaper for the moment because it wants to take the established MBTI II head on.
It took me roughly 45 minutes to complete the test.
While it confirmed everything MBTI told me, when I sat down with Datay, he told me I was a man going through significant changes in my head. It helped put into perspective why the nature of my relationships were changing; why how I work was transforming; and most importantly, it provided me a 30,000 feet view of who I was as a person, the various conflicts playing in my head, and options I could possibly exercise as an individual.
Time spent on this exercise is time well-spent. Understanding what makes you tick helps deal with idiots.
While on idiots, introspect. Most idiots don’t. That is why they have no clue what they stand for. A good place to start is www.yourmorals.org. Run by a group of social psychologists from three American universities, their objective is to understand how our “moral minds” work.
For instance, why do different kinds of people argue passionately about what is “right”?
In answering their questions, you get insights into what you stand for. For instance, I always thought myself a liberal who accords “authority” the respect it deserves. But my score shows I have practically zero tolerance. Perhaps, that explains my churlish behaviour at times. Or maybe, why I’m happy in journalism, a domain where I’m pushed into questioning authority.
I’d imagined myself as the kind of person who disdained puritanism in any form, a “liberal trait”. The premium I place on “purity” as a virtue, however, is as high as that of somebody with a conservative dogma.
I thought I was the kind to whom hedonism comes easily. But on the “distributive justice” scale, when asked to choose, I tilted to minimalism—a theme I intend to write on another day.
I know I’m guilty of falling prey to stereotypes. That is why I try very consciously to be non-judgmental. What stunned me when I took the test is that it showed I am twice as likely as anybody to stereotype people. In hindsight, I can think of at least a few dozen instances where my calls on people and situations were wrong.
Creators of these tests include people like Jonathan Haidt, whose book The Happiness Hypothesis ought to be on every bookshelf. It’s good to know where you stand.
Hack #3: Get Things Done
Buy a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done—perhaps the best self-help book ever written.
It talks of how to unclutter your mind and improve productivity. Allow me to share a glimpse of how it works. Take time off and list everything on your mind. Then plot a quadrant of the kind displayed here and place all that you’ve listed into the box you think it fits best (see graphic).
Now head to www.zendone.com and follow instructions. Zendone is perhaps not the best tool. There are others that do the job superbly well. But it is a good place to tinker around for two weeks to implement all that you’re reading.
The central idea here is that once you’ve put all of what you have to get done into this matrix, you can prioritize clinically.
In doing that, productivity multiplies exponentially and leaves you with time on hand to engage in higher order tasks.
Hack #4: Quantify Everything
At times, it is good to be anal and take a stab at the Quantified Self Movement (www.quantifiedself.com). Believers argue that what cannot be measured cannot be managed.
Every once in a while, I get obsessed with measuring everything I am doing. How many hours do I sleep? What is the quality of that sleep? What time of the hour do I perform best? How do I capture every significant moment of my life? Do I know where every rupee I spend goes? This way I know exactly what am I doing, when, where, why, how.
When viewed on a dashboard, this data provides me with inputs to take tangible steps and improve. Visit www.quantifiedself.com/guide for a listing of every piece of contemporary software and hardware you may need to be part of this movement.
Two tools I use often are Daytum (www.daytum.com) and Mood Panda (www.moodpanda.com).
I use Daytum to track what I described above. Mood Panda may sound floozy, but it allows me keep a record of my “happiness”. If I see a dip in the quotient, I know there is a problem on hand and that I need to work at getting the graph back to optimal levels.
I think it only fair that you ask why energy should be expended on all of these tools.
My only submission here is from P.N. Forni’s lovely book, The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction: “The more you value life, the more you engage with it. The more you engage with it, the more you think your way through it. The more you think your way through it, the more effective you are as its trustee. It is then that you finally live out the elemental truth that in life there are no rehearsals and you only play for keeps.”
(This piece was first published by Mint. All copyrights to this article rest with the newspaper)
The Holstee Manifesto
Buy a framed version of the poster here