Pace of Life!!

I came across this excellent article in WSJ - Not so fast regarding the pace of life. This article is bang on target and really got me thinking. So here I am with this blog to air my views!

Technology has made phenomenal strides in the last century with the advent of phones, television, computers and finally the internet. These inventions have been very beneficial in connecting us, bringing us closer by shrinking distances & breaking down geographical barriers. Never in the human history have we been more connected, updated on global events and in touch amongst ourselves than in the last few decades. However one of the key unintended consequence of these inventions is, they have been shrinking time and increasing the pace of our lives. I am sure most of us would be feeling this in our day to day life. Each passing day and each new technology/gadget competes for a slice of our time. It invariably eats into our personal time earmarked for us, our family and friends.

One of the key shifts that occurred along the way is that the definition of Speed has changed from sense of urgency to efficiency/speed of doing things. This puts a lot of stress on individuals. We are constantly racing the clock with too many things to be completed (both personal and official) in too short a time. Add in the peer pressure, competition and distractions it takes stress to stratospheric levels and we are always out of time. We hardly get time to take a breather, relax and enjoy the simple things in life. By the time we look back and realize this, our life would have passed by on the fast track and you end up wondering what you did with your life. Infact the last decade of my life seems to have vanished before I knew!!

Most of the technologies today are very addictive. We cannot imagine a life without our cell phones, TV's and computers/internet. The addiction has reached levels where you become nervous/restless when you don't have these gadgets around. We are unsure of what to do or how to pass time. If you look back in the not too distant past(10-15yrs) most of us didn't have phones, computers, internet etc. We had a much more balanced and happier life, spending time with our family and friends and doing things that mattered most to us. While tech allows us to be more connected we seem to be losing the personal touch.

One of the biggest things that worries me is that our pace of life is increasing each day/year. Continuous improvement seems to be the order of the day - We are constantly required to do things faster, in lesser time, more efficiently. We seem to be caught in this vicious cycle and are constantly pressed for time and stressed out. Is this pace of life sustainable? Is it possible to stall or reduce the pace of life? What can we do to claim our life back and slow down the pace? Will it ever be possible to be fully cut off from this reality - No Phones, TV, Internet, newspapers etc and not having to worry about doing this or that on-time(Not retirement ofcourse!)?

I seem to have more questions than answers. I would like to hear your thoughts/experience and any answers you might have for some of the questions I have raised above. Thank you for taking time to read thru this and look forward to your comments.

Gartner Hype Cycle 2009

Analyst Firm Gartner has released its latest Hype cycle (2009) detailing out some of the latest technology trends for 2009 and beyond. Pls check out the same.




Source of the above images: Gartner, RWW

You could click on the images to get a better resolution version. When i upload these images it gets a little blurry in blogger.


For more details pls refer the following links:

Gartner Hype Cycle 2009: Web 2.0 Trending Up, Twitter Down

Gartner's 2009 Hype Cycle Special Report Evaluates Maturity of 1,650 Technologies

Circle of Life

Whew! At last am back blogging after a couple of months break. Last couple of months has been crazy with lots of travel & work. Finally i managed to take some time away to blog.

I would like to cover a very interesting concept called circle of life in this post. This came up during a discussion i had with a colleague few weeks back. Given the hectic lifestyles we are in we were discussing on a variety of topics on time management, priorities in life, work-life balance etc. He drew out this very interesting picture which i have elaborated below.



Our life can be pictured a set of concentric circles where we as an individual are at the center with the other aspects of of life like family, work, community etc encompassing the core. For us to be successful in the outer circles we need to ensure that we have the inner circles in order and are taken care. If we dont take care of the inner circles the outer circles will eventually breakdown. The order of priority in life reduces as we go from inner to outer circles. Lets do a deep dive into each of the circles of life.

At the core of our life is us as an individual. For us to be happy and successful in life we need to first and foremost take care of our-self. There are two parts of an individual - Mind and Body. For us to lead a happy life we need to ensure fitness of both mind and Body. To keep our body fit we need to spent some time on exercise, yoga etc. Meditation is a good exercise for the mind. It helps with relieving stress and helps you focus better. Only if we are healthy and happy can we lead a good family life and professional life. So taking care of self should be the top priority.

The Second layer after self is family. We need to ensure that we are spending adequate time with our family and are taking care of them. The family can be both your immediate family(Spouse, kids) and extended family like parents, siblings etc. These are the folks that stay with us thru the ups and downs in our life. In some cases your close friends may also come in this layer. This layer is key bcos they provide us the emotional support and provide meaning to our life. Only if you have a good personal life can you have a good professional/external life. This should be the second order of priority for an individual.

The Third layer after self and family is work. For us to be able to sustain ourself and our family we need to work. Work provides a means for our livelihood. For us to be successful at work we need to ensure that our inner circles of self and family are taken care. If the inner circles are not in order or we have issues in inner circle it will automatically impact our performance at work. While you may not see the impact immdly it will definitely catch up. At the same time if we don't take care of this layer it will affect our sustenance and will impact all other aspects of life. So this should be our third order of priority.

The outermost circle of life is the community. It basically means how are we contributing to improvement of the community? For us to be successful and happy in life and live in harmony with our society we need to give back to the community/society that nurtured us. We have a moral obligation to help/contribute to the society. Here again for us to be able to effectively contribute to the community our inner circles - self, family and work needs to be in order. For example if you are having personal problems or you are out of job you cannot effectively contribute to the society. This should be our fourth order of priority.

For us to be successful and happy in life we need to ensure that we balance our life across all these four circles and we allocate time for each of these circles in the order of priority mentioned above. While we may have short term pressures preventing us from balancing our life we need to ensure that we get back to equilibrium as soon as possible to prevent long term disruption/issues in any of circles.

Pls let me know your thoughts on the same.

TED Talk: Nandan Nilekani's ideas for India's future

Brilliant speech by Nandan Nilekani in Ted about imagining India. Nandan is the visionary CEO of Infosys and the author of the book 'Imagining India'. As part of this speech Nandan explains four brands of ideas that will determine whether India can continue its recent breakneck progress.

Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond

'Collapse' is an excellent read. In this book Jared Diamond tries to analyze what caused some of the major civilizations of the past to collapse and what can we learn from their failures. The book is divided into three major sections. In the first two sections Jared does an in depth analysis on several past and modern societies and the factors that led to their success/failure. In the final part of the book he tries to come up with some practical lessons that we can learn from the failure of past societies and how do they apply in today's context. Overall the key message from the book is that environmental destruction and unsustainable development are key reasons for failure of successful societies.

Jared picks an diverse set of societies from different geographies, time periods and cultures for this analysis. He has come up a 5 point framework for analyzing each of the societies. The key factors of the framework include environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners and society's response to environmental problems.

The book starts off with a detailed analysis of modern day Montana - considered to be one of the most natural and pristine states in US and analyzes some of the problems faced in Montana society due to mining, logging, non-native species etc. In the next few chapters he analyzes some of the past societies starting with Easter island where the natives had deforested the complete island while competing with each other to build more and bigger statues. He then briefly covers the collapse of Pitcairn/Henderson societies, Anasazi's of American southwest and Maya civilizations. This is followed by analysis of some successful societies like New Guinea, Tikopia and medieval Japan(Tokugawa era). He wraps up this section with detailed analysis of Vikings and Norse Greenland society which had failed after surviving for more than four centuries. Jared concludes that the Norse society failed due to its inability to adapt to the harsh Greenland environment, clinging on to unsustainable European lifestyle and last but not the least - not mingling and learning from the Inuits(locals).

The second section of of book covers about the challenges faced by some of the current societies and their outcomes. Jared starts off with the Rwandan Genocide and the factors leading to it. He then talks about Hispaniola and contrasts how the two countries of this island(Dominican Republic and Haiti) with the same history and environments had responded to their challenges differently leading to different outcomes - Dominican Republic is thriving whereas Haiti is on the verge of collapse. He goes on to analyze how the rapid growth and industrialization of China is impacting its environment and affects the quality of life if its people. Finally he wraps up the section with an analysis of some of the challenges faced by Australia and their response to it.

Based on the detailed analysis Jared reasons that past societies had made their disastrous decisions due to - Failure to anticipate, Failure to perceive, Rational bad behavior, Disastrous values and unsuccessful solutions. He sums up the current day scenario and details some of the actions taken by governments and corporates to protect the environment. He concludes the book on a positive note stating that the awareness of environmental issues is increasing and that governments and corporates are taking it seriously and acting on it. He is fairly optimistic about the success of our society.

Overall it was a very interesting read. Jared has done an excellent job by providing indepth details and doing a thorough analysis using a logical framework. The only comment i have is that most of the past societies he has taken are fairly small(except Mayas) and have fragile environments. However his point that environment destruction is a key factor leading to failures is valid and true. It would have been good if he had analyzed the failure of any major civilizations. Anyways this book has spurned my interest in studying the demise of major historic societies like Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Indus Valley and Chinese civilizations. If you have any pointers to these pls let me know!

Are we entering an era of pandemics?

Swine flu has been on top of news for the last couple of weeks. It has been spreading across the globe really fast and on last count around 21 countries have confirmed cases of Swine flu and another 20 more countries had suspected cases. The speed at which this pandemic has spread across the globe has been mind-boggling. The first reported case of Swine flu was in Mexico on April 2nd 2009 and the virulent strain of the swine flu was discovered on April 16th only. Within a short span of 3-4 weeks this has spread to 40 countries across 5 continents putting millions of people at risk!

This is not the first time the world has seen pandemics. The biggest one in the not too distant past was the 1918 Spanish flu. This pandemic claimed an estimated 50 million plus lives across the globe. Some of the other significant pandemics that caused large scale impact include 1958 Asian flu,1968 Hong Kong flu etc. The more recent pandemics in this decade include SARS, Avian flu etc. Never before in the history of humans has the risk of being affected in a pandemic of a global scale that too within a short span of time been higher. The pace of spread of these pandemics gives us very less time to respond/find cures.

Some interesting patterns that i see based on these are:

a) These pandemics seems to be occuring more and more often (3 significant ones so far in this decade)

b) Most of these virulent strains are resistant to known anti-biotics and drugs and are increasing harder to cure using our current medicines

c) The speed with they spread across the globe is rapidly increasing with each outbreak

Increasing trade and travel between countries has been acting as a catalyst speeding up the proliferation of these pandemics. As global population is getting aggregated into ever-growing cities, more and more people are crammed into smaller places/close proximity. In lot of 3rd world countries the living conditions & hygene in these cities are really bad. This exponentially increases the risk of both creating a pandemic and being exposed to a pandemic. If you notice another interesting trend, more than 60% of all infectious diseases are caused by 'zoonoses' - pathogenic viruses that originate in animals and jump to humans. Some of the classic examples of zoonoses include SARS, bird flu, HIV/AIDS, West nile virus, Ebola etc. A lot of these are very lethal and we still dont have a cure yet. Zooneses are caused due to increasing human/animal interactions & clashes due to declining habitat.

Taking a step back, while we have made gaint strides in science and medicine in the last century our risk to getting exposed to these pandemics has only increased. The complexity of newer diseases has outpaced the growth of science and technology. Whether knowingly or unknowingly we may have contributed to this increased risk of pandemics thru pollution, decreasing quality of key natural resources - air/water/soil, deforestation, shinking habitats, unsustainable population levels, genetic engineering, wide spread use of harmful chemicals like pesticides/insecticides, dumping of radio-active wastes etc. These bring home a simple fact that nature is infinitely complex and sensitive, playing with it can affect us in ways beyond our comprehension. Pandemics is nature's way of re-establishing the equilibrium that was disturbed by humans. The sooner we start realizing this simple fact and start acting responsibly the better the chances of our future generations enjoying the quality of life that we enjoy today.

Here are some interesting links/articles on this topic:

Age of pandemics - Excellent article by Larry Brilliant in WSJ
Swine flu tracking map by Ushahidi.com

Pls let me know your thoughts and comments on the above!