Don't think about the Pink Elephant

When you read the heading of this post, what was the first thing that came to your mind? A Pink Elephant?

Off late, this has been the question that I ask many of my teammates. And I ask this everytime someone comes up to me and says,
"I don't think we are in a bad position for this sprint."
"I don't think I have a problem with my manager." 
"I don't think we'll be able to complete this task within this time, given the experience we had last week."

Research has proven that the human brain has a big issue dealing with negatives.
In my experience it's more so when the sentence itself begins with negatives.

Someone came to me to get an email reviewed, which read like this, "We cannot support this feature by date X as the UI concept is not available."
I got it rephrased to, "We shall be able to support this feature by date X if we get the UI concept by date Y." 
This way we communicated a positive intent to support, and subtly put the onus on resolving dependencies to the other side as well.

There are a handful of people who are eternally optimistic. When one interacts with them, one feels everything looks so "Bade araam se". I'm lucky to have a few of them in my team as well.
Being like that comes naturally to them. 
But for normal people like me, it needs constant conditioning of the mind. 
A lot of our attitude shows up in the way we talk, our day to day outlook and the overall body language, without our knowledge. 
Almost every time that I have started something on a pessimistic note, I have failed. 
Almost every interview that I have attended in the past in which I have uttered the words, "I don't know" (or similar) when faced with a difficult question, the interview has ended shortly after that.

Many years back, a manager of mine wrote these exact words in his annual appraisal comments about me, "Santosh needs to work with a more Can Do Attitude".
Given that we didn't exactly share the best of professional relationships, I could have easily ticked it off as an attempt to vilify me, since it was documented and could be used against me in the appraisal discussion. 
Nevertheless, I sat down to understand if this was true and how to address it. And it turned out that I had a fair deal of change to be done in my attitude and communication. More on what I did, in some other post perhaps.
To keep it short, everyone likes people who believe "The Word is my World" rather than "The World is my Word".

Around this time, I also attended a training program where the trainer told us this story about a seasoned mountaineer who had climbed all the major peaks in the Himalayas. He spoke about the difference between the amateurs and the seasoned ones when they have to tackle a tough section of the mountain in front of them.
While the amateurs try to find all ways around it or maybe even bypass it, the veterans always find a way through it. 
His point was, "If I am here to conquer a mountain 6000 or more metres high, then I must not be deterred by this small section of mountain in front of me".
This was the most important learning point for me from that training program.

We must be like the seasoned professional in our outlook towards everything.
At work, everyday we are faced with all kinds of challenges and obstacles. Its up to us to decide if we want to procrastinate, circumvent, find an excuse or take these challenges head on. When I mean head on, I don't necessarily mean to be fast and furious in action.
Of course, doubts, apprehensions, will always be there.
Its important to take note of them and find ways to solve them, rather than not taking up the challenge itself. We also need to reassure ourselves that "Aal iz well".

While we may not be successful at all times, it will help us grow stronger and be better prepared the next time around.

A very profound quote from Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

Enchanting Europe

There were a few other topics that I wanted to write about, but since I returned from a short business trip, I thought I'll write about it first while its still fresh in memory.

I got an opportunity to travel to Germany for the workshop of a new project, and I had quite a few of my colleagues with me. Most of them stayed in the same hotel as mine, in a quiet countryside hotel in a place just outside of Stuttgart.

The view from my room was something like this.

We went to Stuttgart city twice during my stay. It vividly reminded me of the Need For Speed Porsche Unlimited game that I was addicted to during my engineering days. Many of the places, the U-Bahn lines in the middle of the roads, the old style Hauptbahnhof looked all so familiar from that game.

Over the weekend, we got a chance for two short day trips. One to Schwarzwald(Black Forest) and the other to Interlaken in Switzerland. 

Here's Triberg waterfalls in Schwarzwald, home to one of the oldest hydroelectric projects in the world.

Interlaken was just around three and a half hours' drive from the place where we stayed. It was a place full of vast lakes, giving a picturesque view of the Alps behind them.

 

This was also the place where Yash Chopra shot a lot of the scenes in DDLJ. In honour of that, the local authorities put up a statue of him, calling him the Ambassador of Interlaken.

This was my fourth trip outside of India in the one year after joining Mercedes Benz, two of them being to the US and two to Germany.

Somehow I liked Germany, and Europe a lot more than even the sunshine state of California, despite the weather. This is my kind of place, in a quaint setting with an old world charm about it.
This explains why I have a second post on Europe, the first one being more than a decade back.

A family friend of ours, who's settled in the US and comes to India once a year always says, "America is man made, Europe is God made".

There were some things that I liked about Germany in particular.

Public transport system
You can buy one ticket and use them in any of the buses or train lines, as long as you know how far that ticket can take you. There are no turnstiles in train stations, nor conductors in buses. They believe in the honour system, based on trust.

It is efficient and dependable, and available at late in the night as well. A much better experience when compared to what I had in UK.

Autobahns and driving
Germany is one of the few countries in the world with no speed limits on sections of the Autobahn. This is to show off what German automobiles are capable of.

There were stretches where Shyam was driving at 180 kmph, only to be overtaken by someone driving at upwards of 200kmph.

But there is not at all Fast and Furious. It's disciplined, patient and meticulous- something that I didn't notice much even in the US.

Even taxi drivers used to observe the speed limits, even in residential and village areas.

Generally safe

I generally felt secure, even in the most desolate stretches even late at night. Happened to see German police swinging into action within minutes of an altercation at a local restaurant.

There were somethings that I didn't like as well.

Expensive

In general, cost of living is pretty high owing to high per capita income. 

More than that many basic things for which you need to pay.

For instance, extra plates at a restaurant, or say, using the restroom in a public place.

Even in the smallest village, we had to pay for parking - can't imagine something like this in the near future anywhere in India.

If Germany is expensive, Switzerland is doubly so - ranks highest on the Big Mac Index.

No country for old men(and women)

I wouldn't want to delve more into it. But this is the price one pays for an independent way of living.

But the best part of the trip was the great company I had with me.

I don't know about them, atleast I had a great time in their company. Be it the joint breakfast, be it the dinner and after dinner talk, or be it the hot coffee after a long day at work ,or be it the short walk in the cold winter to the bus stop - I loved every moment of it.

After coming back, we had a team dinner in Bangalore city (and not Whitefield). After this, I made my team an offer they could not refuse - Ice creams at Lakeview on MG Road.

"If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, take people along!"