Archive for October, 2005
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 17 Oct 2005, 6:43 PM - 2 Comments
During a recent lunch meeting, Ashwin Rangan, CIO of Walmart.com talked about this concept. So, credit goes to Ashwin.
One of the key things in life is to “selectively forget”
things. There are so many things that happen to us during the course of
our lifetime. I always say “either we win or we learn” When we “learn”
life is giving us some feedback. The feedback and learning is what is
important. There is no point in recreating the entire scenarios once
the learning has happened. I talked about it in some sense when I said “Use your thinking bandwidth wisely.”
Wouldn’t it be nice if you review your day and mentally capture the
learnings from the day and decide to “selectively forget” certain
things. I am sure there will be less clutter in the mind to deal with.
Thanks Ashwin.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 17 Oct 2005, 8:51 AM - 2 Comments
Thank you for all the support for my first manifesto on ChangeThis titled “25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself“. The rankings for this manifesto as of today are:
Download Rank: #23
Email Rank: #11
Blog Rank: #30
I feel blessed and fortunate.
I have put in another proposal. This time it’s called “25 More Ways to Distinguish Yourself“.
When you have a moment, please take a look at the proposal and if you
like it, click on the “Yes Write this Manifesto” button to cast your
vote to support this.
If you are new to this site, you can click on “Distinguish Yourself” series to get a sneak preview of what I am thinking for the manifesto.
Thanks in advance.
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 15 Oct 2005, 10:08 PM - 2 Comments
Most of the time when you purchase something for your convenience you
pay twice. Once to purchase it and once when you make use of that
convenience. Typically, the first cost is measured and the second one
is ignored.
Take 24/7 email access for example. You can get it using blackberry and the costs are typically:
Cost of the unit: $X
Service fee: $Y per month.
Total: $X + ($Y times the number of months)
Actually, there is another cost which I think is easily ignored. Every
time you are playing with your son or daughter and in the middle of the
play, you take some time out to check your emails and probably respond
back to one or two of them, it costs. It’s just that your son or
daughter is paying for it!
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 15 Oct 2005, 7:48 AM - 1 Comment
Curt Rosengren at Worthwhile blog, points to an article about a survey on career change.
Interestingly more than 50% of the 1700 global executives say that they
want to do something very different with their careers. If you include
the “may be” responses, the percentage goes up to 75%. Here are my
observations:
* I wish they had asked one more question “Are you bringing your 110% into your current job everyday?”
and it would be interesting to watch the responses. Most of the time,
the job is not the problem, it is our commitment to bring more of
ourselves to the job.
* If 75% of these people were thinking of a completely different
career, my thinking is that half of them are fantasizing and
romanticizing that the other job is better than their current one.
Meaning they are comparing the worst in their jobs to the best in the
jobs they are aspiring to get. This strategy often fails as once they
do get the other job, they will start comparing the worst in the new
job with the best in their previous jobs. It’s a “no-win” situation.
* Lastly, I believe that each one of us should identify ourselves with a “cause” rather than a job.
Come on, we are all bigger than our jobs 
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 14 Oct 2005, 11:39 PM - 2 Comments
Whether you are an IT professional or not, you are always working on
one or more projects. Most often you are handed projects from your
managers and in addition you have your own personal projects.
One common question before you start any project is “How long does it take complete the project?”
Seems like a simple question but without the right estimation skills,
you might give an answer that can hurt you rather than helping you. If
your estimation off on the higher side, your competence will be in
question. On the other hand, if your estimation is off on the lower
side, you will have to work extra hours leading to several issues
starting with increase in stress and work/life (im)balance.
Estimation is an art but it can be learned. Providing estimates with
limited estimation skills can be a bad thing both for you and for the
projects that you are involved with.
I am confident - whatever your profession, there is literature
related to estimation for your profession. It’s worth investing some of
your time on acquiring this skill.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 13 Oct 2005, 10:19 PM - 1 Comment
My friend Alan Lattenner
of VenArete Growth Advisors points me to two great sites. Great stuff
on philosophy, wisdom and a ton of inspiration. Here they are:
1. ThinkArete
2. Zaadz
Enjoy!
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 13 Oct 2005, 7:04 PM - Leave Comment
I had an opportunity to speak at HP as part of an NetIP
event. I enjoyed speaking there as it was almost an interactive
discussion with the group. Once the talk was completed, a few people
talked to me one-on-one and most of them asked for my contact details.
I give out my cards freely knowing that only a small portion of the
people that get these cards will do anything with them. I hear from
probably 25% of all the people that get my contact information.
This time it was different. I heard from a lot of people and there was
one email that was more interesting than the rest. It was from a
participant called Mani who was requesting for a one-on-one meeting.
Here are some key things in that were included in Mani’s email:
a. Mani’s photo to help me connnect easily
b. Mani had offered to connect me with two other speakers
(unfortunately I know both of them extremely well) but the gesture
matters
c. Mani offered a couple of suggestions to improve my presentation. Not surprising from a Toastmasters champ.
d. Mani stated his request clearly – what he is expecting from our one-on-one meeting.
e. Mani gave several options to meet – coffee, lunch or a game of tennis.
I can go on. In summary, there were so many things right with the email that I am meeting him tomorrow for coffee.
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 13 Oct 2005, 6:34 PM - Leave Comment
Today was fun. I had lunch with one of the board members at CIGNEX – Yakov Soloveychik
(unfortunately Yakov still does not have a blog yet) and we were
talking about learning from success and failure. Yakov had an
interesting observation. Here is the gist.
A lot of learning happens from failure. While you can learn from
someone else’s success, it is not that effective as it is very hard to
duplicate someone else’s success. The circumstances are different, the
skill sets will be different, the posture is different – basically
there are too many variables that will prevent you from copying someone
else’s success.
However, failure is different. Once you know how a person failed,
chances are that you can learn from that experience and avoid making
that mistake.
So, what’s the summary:
Please don’t invest all your time
trying to learn how somebody succeeded. It’s important but it’s not
everything. Learn from someone’s past mistakes. What went wrong and how
you can avoid making those mistakes.
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 12 Oct 2005, 11:46 PM - Leave Comment
It is no secret that in order to succeed in the long run you have to think long term. This little quote reminds us just that.
“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining”
- John F. Kennedy
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 11 Oct 2005, 9:47 AM - Leave Comment
The need for distinguishing oneself has never been greater. The time
has come for all of us to be “special” to survive in this fast changing
world. After the overwhelming response received for my first manifesto
titled “25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself“, I continued to research and
write about more ways for distinguishing oneself. The objective of this
manifesto is to provide more ideas and insights for people who are
willing to invest in their time and energy to become “special” and
stand out from the crowd. You can follow the blog at
http://blog.lifebeyondcode.com/DistinguishYourself to get a sneak
preview of what’s coming up in the manifesto. My inspiration for
writing this series is from Tom Peters (Brand You) and Seth Godin
(Purple Cow). Special thanks to both of them.
Please take a look at the manifesto here and if you like it, please
vote for me to motivate me to complete writing the manifesto.
http://www.changethis.com/proposals/540
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
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