8 Lessons in Career Management that I Learnt from the Delhi Half Marathon

Running Can Teach You Lessons for Life

Running is the easiest sport and athletic event that anyone can undertake at any place, without thinking too much. All it needs is running shoes and the right intent. 

I have been running for the past few years, but unfortunately I haven’t been consistent and hence, so far I had not participated in any running event till I decided to take the plunge in the Delhi Half Marathon and atleast do the Dream Run of 6 km. Nestlé being an Associate Sponsor further helped as there was enough motivation from people around the organization and the buzz couldn’t have been missed. 

As I was doing the Dream Run, there were various thoughts that came to my mind about how running can teach so many lessons on career management. Through this blog, I wanted to share those learnings with all of you.

1. Start from an advantageous position: I met a lot of people after the run who complained about how they were struggling at the beginning because of the huge number of people ahead of them. I did not face any such issue as I was standing right at the front and the minute the race began, I was off to a quick start. Same is true when you begin your career as well. Graduating from a good B-school or starting your career from a good company is the advantageous position that one can get, when beginning one’s career. 

2. Navigate your way through: There were some serious runners in the Dream Run, who did not get a good starting position, but after a few minutes, they were able to find openings and opportunities and were able to navigate their way through. This is another lesson in your career as well. Just because you did not begin with an advantageous position doesn’t mean that you cannot find opportunities and slowly navigate your way through to come to the position you want to be at. 

3. Overtaking is a part of the course: While you are running at your pace, there will be some people who will overtake you and some other people who, you will overtake. This is the reality and this reality holds true in your career as well. There will be times when you will get promoted or be given a better role before your peers and at times, the vice versa will happen. Embracing that reality is the best way to live with it. 

4. You will find friends on the way: As you run, there are volunteers who are standing and offering water to you so that you can continue on your run without feeling dehydrated. You need to find these volunteers and friends in your career who will be there to help you and support you so that you can move ahead. 

5. Consistency is the name of the game: There are many who start the race with great energy but a few kilometres down the line, they are panting for breath and are struggling to take the next step. Being consistent is one of the key requirements for running as well as for being stable and successful in your career. You have to keep performing and keep delivering regularly and consistently to climb the rungs of the corporate ladder. 

6. Set your own pace: At what speed and pace would you like to run is a choice that you and only you can make. While the atmosphere, the environment and the people around can encourage you, no one else can decide your pace. In your career graph as well, it is upto you on what pace you want to go at. All the other external paraphernalia is there to facilitate your pace but not decide your pace. 

7. Never think of Giving Up: There will be certain times in the race when you would be questioning yourself and asking ‘Why am I doing this?’, ‘When will this get over?’, ‘Should I just stop and give up?’. That is the moment when you need to let your will-power, your training and your motivation swipe away these thoughts with a great force because finishing the race is non-negotiable. Such thoughts will often come at various phases of your career as well, where you will feel like throwing in the towel. But that is the moment of truth and a moment of testing your mettle and you have to overcome these seeds of doubt and move forward to your goal, to your ambition and to your aspiration. 

8. In the end, the Race is only with yourself: You may think that with thousands of other people running with you, you are racing against them. Nothing can be further from truth than this. At the end of the race, you are only celebrating your own accomplishment, looking at your time and also checking whether you have beaten your previous best or not. While you may check on how others have done to get a sense of perspective, the truth is that the race is only for yourself. In your career, this is the biggest truth that you should acknowledge. You may think that you are competing with others, but in reality your career is your own individual race, which you run at your own pace and accomplish your own set goal. This is a mental game and your mind will decide what you can achieve. 

Running gave me such a wonderful perspective and lesson on my career and my life that I will continue running more and more. I hope that these thoughts helped you and resonated with you as well, and I am sure that the half-marathoners would have also gone through a similar experience and would be able to relate to this as well. 

What are some of the lessons that you picked up from running that you would like to share with me and others? Please drop in a comment and let me and others know. 

Were we lucky or is Kindness the norm in and around Jaisalmer?

Traffic in India can not only make you miss your deadlines and your meetings but can sometimes also make you miss your holiday! We realized this the hard way, when we missed our train to Jaisalmer because we could not reach the Delhi station on time, despite being on the road for more than two hours to cover a distance that shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes! After thinking and exploring various other ways and ideas to reach Jaisalmer – bus, cab, own car, another train – it seemed like we will have to bid goodbye to our plans and to all the money that we had paid for the entire package. As disappointment was setting in, we managed to get lucky and find seats on a direct train to Jaisalmer the next day, which would reduce our holiday by a day but yet allow us to savour the rest of the time. 

Putting the disappointment behind us, we boarded the train that would begin our family holiday. After an overnight journey, the train chugged in slowly at 10.30 am at Pokharan – a town that I had heard so much of – a town that was in the papers many times in the last few years for conducting successful nuclear tests. It seemed like a small and sleepy town like many other parts of India, but the station was buzzing with activity. We were told that the train will halt at this station for 30 minutes. 30 minutes is a fairly long time, but then patience has never been a virtue with us Indians and as expected, the lone tea seller on the station was busy handing out cups of tea as fast as he could to all the people around him, who were shoving the Rs. 10 and Rs. 20 notes on his face to catch his attention. 

Being patient can sometimes show you a different side of humans as I discovered when my turn came. I asked him for four cups of tea but his tea kettle could fill in only three and a half cups of tea. I handed him Rs. 40 at the rate of Rs. 10 each, but he returned Rs. 10 saying that since he had not given me the entire fourth cup of tea, he would not charge for that last cup. I was pleasantly surprised. I did not know that this was the beginning of the many acts of kindness that I am going to witness in the days to come during my short but wonderful holiday to Jaisalmer, Rajasthan in India. 

We reached Jaisalmer station at 2 pm and the driver who came to pick us up seemed to be a helpful kind. Our first impression of the driver turned out to be bang on. During the three day trip, we asked him to show us one Jain temple and the luxurious Suryagarh hotel, which were not a part of the itinerary or the route, but he did not hesitate one bit as his single objective was to ensure that we have a great holiday without missing on a single thing. 

We were staying at Hotel Rang Mahal and the last night of our stay was planned in a tent in the middle of the desert, but seeing the temperature in Jaisalmer, my family felt that it would be prudent to stay in the comfort of the hotel rather than the tent. This meant adding one more night to the hotel’s package and cancelling our stay at the tent. I called up the manager later in the evening, who had already left for the day. I explained him the situation, told him about how I had anyway paid for a night which we didn’t utilize because of our missed train and requested him if he could extend the stay by a night. Initially, he said that we will have to pay for the extra night but I requested him to see on what best can be done. The next day, despite it being his mother’s death anniversary when he was supposed to be home, he came to the hotel to only look into my case. After a brief meeting and discussion with him, he extended our stay by one night and made that extra night completely complimentary! I was completely blown away by his act of kindness. 

Now that the hotel stay was taken care of, we headed to Sam to enjoy our desert safari. Since we stopped in the middle to enjoy the beautiful hotel of Suryagarh, by the time we reached Sam, it was nearing sunset and we had a camel ride lined up for us. There was also the option of doing a jeep safari and we could decide to see the sunset from the camel or from the jeep. We decided to do a quick camel ride against the normal time for the ride which is much longer. While getting off, the guy who took us for the camel ride mentioned this to us in Hindi “Please go and enjoy the sunset on your jeep safari. In case, you decide to not take the jeep safari, you can come back and I will be here and I will take you further into the desert so that you can enjoy the camel ride for more time.” Another pleasant surprise for us. 

Next was the turn to meet the tent operator and ask him to help us in getting a good jeep safari and also figure out on what can be done since we were not staying in his tent that was booked in our name. He said that at the last minute, since he won’t be able to give the tent to anyone else, he will have to charge us the amount. But to help us, he will bring down the price of the jeep safari from the usual Rs. 3,000 to 1500. We went ahead with what we got. After coming back from the safari, there was a complete Rajasthani folk dance that had been planned, which was really enjoyable. After the dance, when we went to pay the tent operator for the jeep safari, to our surprise once again, he refused to take the money and said “Since you have already paid for the tents and not staying here, the least I can do is not charge you for this jeep safari.”

Now with so many incidences, we just came back wondering with one thought ‘Did we just get plain lucky during the entire trip or is kindness the norm in Jaisalmer?

  

Paragliding in the interiors of Maharashtra, India

Who would have thought that a place that lies hundred kilometres away from Mumbai, off the Mumbai-Pune Expressway would be a hub of adrenaline rush, with regulars frequenting this place every now and then to get their fill of endorphin!

It was the beginning of 2014, and instead of attempting to take a New Year Resolution, my plan for 2014 was to go for new experiences wherever possible. The first opportunity of experiencing something new came right at the start of the year, when a conversation with a friend led to the realization that he is heading to Kamshet on a weekend which happened to be on the dates when I would be visiting Mumbai. Without thinking too much, I asked to be a part of the trip that would involve camping under the stars on the first night, followed by paragliding on the second day! I was hooked.

We left from Mumbai at 9 pm on Thursday evening, weaving our way through the traffic till we hit the wide roads of the Mumbai-Pune expressway. We drove for almost two hours till we reached the town of Kamshet. After a quick stop over for a hot cup of tea, we drove up the hill to reach one of the points from paragliders take off during the day time. The top of the hill was isolated at this time of the hour. We pitched our tents and set up a fire. The idea was to cook food under the stars and feel as close to nature as possible. The chilly winds were playing spoilsport and it took quite a while to get the fire started. After a great meal, we finally called it a night at 3 am with the stars giving us great company. 

At 7 am, the chirping of the birds and bright sunlight wading through the tent woke us up. As soon as I stepped out of the tent, I witnessed the most beautiful sunrise ever! We packed up and drove down as it was time to head to the Indus Paragliding School, from where we would head out to the hills along with other paragliders. Since I was doing this for the first time, I would be flying tandem, whereas the other experienced guys would be flying solo. Since the wind was blowing in a different direction, we went to a different hill from the one where we spent the night. There was a total of 20 of us who would take to the skies soon. I decided to go after three other people. When my turn came, I was told to run forward for about 50m and then jump off the cliff. There was a bit of excitement as well as fear when I was asked to do that. But this was an opportunity that I did not want to miss and I went ahead and jumped! Two seconds later, I was soaring up, up and up and all the fear vanished. There was a feeling of triumph, a feeling of freedom and pure adrenaline. After getting comfortable in the skies, my coach took me further up from where I could see many wind mills below and the view all around me was something that we never get to enjoy while on the ground. 

After being in the sky for half an hour, I came down and waited for the other paragliders who were cruising in the air for much more time. Seeing so many of them in the sky was a sight worth witnessing!

After a long and tiring day, we all headed back to the Indus Paragliding School where we had hot lunch awaiting us. After a great lunch, we headed to our rooms for a well-deserved nap. By the time we woke up, it was early evening and we decided to sit by the lake and enjoy the serene nature that lay in front of us. The lake with the mountains behind it had such a soothing effect and gave us a break from seeing concrete structures daily. 

As the evening descended and gave way to the night, all of us got together at the verandah along with the hosts and shared our stories and our experiences over drinks and food. This was a perfect way to end the day. 

These two days were an experience that I will cherish throughout my life, and if I get a chance I would go for it again.

Party Hard! No One is Listening.

Imagine being invited to a party, where you’re told:

“Come and enjoy the party, where the music will be loud, the party will go on till the wee hours of 

morning, and no neighbors will complain about the noise.”

It is very unlikely to expect someone to say something like this. In fact, you would give a doubting look to the person who says something like this. But I got to witness all of this in Cully.

Cully is a small town in Switzerland, situated on Lake Geneva. Despite a very low population of just 1,750 people, Cully is known for the Cully Jazz Festival, where people from across Switzerland come to enjoy the festival. 

I was visiting Switzerland for a workshop, and all the participants decided to visit the Cully Jazz Festival, which had thousands of people. It seemed as if the entire population of Cully had come to this festival. 

Obviously, that wasn’t true and the festival had people from many other places. 

After checking out a few jazz performances ourselves, we headed to the lake. Right by the lake, there 

was a huge, transparent canopy with hundreds of people dancing inside. Surprisingly, we couldn’t hear any music. That’s when; a member of our group noticed the board on top of the canopy that read ‘Silent Party’. 

What’s a party without music? Even the religious ceremonies in India have loudspeakers blaring the 

latest Hindi blockbuster and here was a board that said Silent Party. It seemed difficult to imagine a concept like that. Curious, we decided to check it out. Before entering, all of us were handed head phones. We put on our head phones and joined the revellers inside. What we saw inside was very exciting! There were hundreds of people dancing, with their heads bobbing with the head phones and yet there was not a single beat of music. To amuse myself, I took off my head phones for some time and tried to soak in the atmosphere. It seemed as if people were in a trance or a telepathic session and they were not realizing what they were doing, while I was watching them move. 

A few minutes later, I noticed that I was dancing in a different manner to a beat, whereas a few others from the group were dancing differently. I pointed this out to one of my friends who was not following the beat, but that’s when I was told that he was dancing to a different DJ and I was dancing to another one!

I turned around and looked at the stage and there were three DJs, playing their music live with a different number mentioned on the board behind each DJ: 1, 2 and 3.

That’s when I realized that our head phones had the option of changing from one DJ to other by changing the number that represented a particular DJ. Within the same premises, people could listen and dance to different music and everyone could enjoy their own genre. This made the party even cooler than I had thought.

After that, our entire group would signal a particular number and all of us would switch our head phones to that DJ, so that all of us would be dancing to a similar beat and enjoying each other’s steps.

What was beautiful was that we were all dancing near the lake, under the stars and yet Cully was as 

silent as any other night. 

I just wished that night that it would be so great to have Silent Parties in India. A country like ours, 

where noise pollution is always at its peak, a Silent Party is the need of the hour. Maybe Goa can take the lead and come up with something like this and I would book my tickets for such an event right away!

Readers, if you get an invitation to a Silent Party, then please go for it and enjoy a unique experience.

Have You Paid the Trolls at the Troll Plaza?

As you get onto the social media highway and start gaining social media currency, along with becoming something/someone more meaningful in the offline world, chances are - that you would have gained significant clout and there would be people following you/your fans who would want to hear what you got to say and see what you got to show.

Let me break the bubble by saying that this social media highway is not a smooth cruise! You will encounter a number of speed breakers in the form of troll plazas that will try to halt you, slow you down, and deter you from your path so that your ride to your destiny and destination is filled with pitfalls. 

And if you happen to be a celebrity of any sort in any field, then the payment to the trolls will be much higher! So the two questions that come to mind are:

1. Why and where are these troll plazas?
2. What is the payment that they seek, that will allow you to pass through them and what payment should never be given to them?

But before that, let us first be clear on who or what is a troll? You never know, the symptoms and behavior that you display would indicate that you could be a troll yourself!

A troll is a person on the online world, who doesn’t know you personally but yet believes that he knows you, your personality and your life very well. He feels that it is his prerogative to point out what you are doing wrong in life, how pathetic your choices and actions are, how stupid your looks, your knowledge or your fashion sense is, etc… Basically, this person will find a flaw in something or the other in you, and make it his agenda to not only point it out to you but also to the entire world as that is the only way he can make a mark of himself in the social world. Quite often, these trolls are hidden behind fake identities and if not, then they feel powerful behind their online profiles, sitting in the comfort of their room and blurting out their unwanted and unsolicited advice and views. 

Coming back to the question that I raised ‘Why and where are these troll plazas?’. The reasons troll plazas exist is because of multiple reasons:

         i. Some trolls feel terrible about their own life as they haven’t achieved anything and for them, pulling down others who are doing well is a way of coming to peace with their own misery. 

       ii. Sometimes, they do not like your face and are unable to fathom the reason for your success and hence they will find every opportunity to point out your flaw.

      iii. Jealousy is another big emotion that drives a lot of trolls because sometimes when they see people who were lucky enough to get the chances that they got by either being at the right place at the right time or by being born to parents who had achieved immense success (sons and daughters of celebrities), they feel that life has been unfair to them and the only way to get even with life is by being vindictive and vicious to people who had better stars in their favour. 

       iv. Sometimes trolls wear the cloak of moral police and according to them, people are supposed to behave, act and dress up as per the standards and norms that seems correct to the trolls and when one doesn’t follow those codes, the trolls are not able to bear it. 

      v. Hero worship is another reason why trolls exist. They are so blindly in love or adulation of their heroes that if someone has a different point of view or someone says something against their hero, they feel that it is their duty to come forward and protect their hero, who may not even care or notice what the other person has to say about them. 

      vi. Intolerance to another point of view or a different religious philosophy is another reason why a plethora of trolls float around the stratosphere of social media, with their weapon of trash talk ready in their minds that just makes way the minute the fingertips type it out and bring it alive. 

These trolls can be found on each and every platform that exists, which is accessible to the public at large. So one could encounter these troll plazas on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, blog, websites and the list can go on and on. 

This brings me to the second question of ‘what do these trolls at the troll plazas want?’ 

The biggest high for any troll is to get noticed, get talked about, get a reply from the person being attacked, get likes or retweets on his comment that proves to him that people have really enjoyed what he has to say. All of this emboldens him to do more of such things. 

If a troll has attacked you for the first time, the best way to move forward is to ignore the person and not even acknowledge him. Some of the trolls may realize the futility of attacking you and may back off. If the troll continues to attack you further, a witty and smart reply can be a tactic that can be deployed. If you are a celebrity with a strong following, chances are that your fans will latch onto your reply and share it with others and you will have the upper hand while a troll will fall flat on his face. If the troll continues his attack and is getting vicious in his language, you can either block him, report him or share his comment/tweet with your friends and fans so that they can tackle him because a troll is like a bully, who can attack a single person, but when he is faced with a huge crowd going after him, he will quickly get into his shell. 

If you are the one who is being attacked, and you decide to stop and get into a verbal argument with the troll, the task of the troll has been achieved and he has been able to derail you from your track. That is a heavy payment to be made from your side. It is not worth it. This is the route to be avoided. This is the payment that shouldn’t be made at any troll plaza, irrespective of how angry or frustrated you feel. 

What are your suggestions and ways to pay the trolls at these troll plazas? I would love to know from you.

Back From The Sabbatical

Dear Reader,

Please ignore the title. The title is only to take care of my guilt conscience, but otherwise there is not even an iota of truth to it!

Eight months have passed since I wrote my big blog with huge promises of How I am avoiding Resolutions - http://fugleman.blogspot.in/2015/01/2015-let-us-continue-with-e-model.html, but till date, this site hasn’t seen a single other blog coming up since then. It is a promise that I haven’t kept with my readers and with myself and I feel terrible about it. 

So what is the issue? Why have I not been able to share my thoughts as frequently as they occur in this mind of mine? What has been stopping me? Is it inertia? Is it lack of topics to talk about? Is it laziness or Is it a blogger’s block? Now if there can be a writer’s block, surely there can be a blogger’s block too. After all, time is changing!

Well let me tell you, the reason is none of the above… or when I think deeper, maybe it is all of the above and more! Have you ever faced a situation where you have gone for a buffet meal and you have been tempted with too many options, such that you have filled your plate to the brim, hoping that you will be able to relish each and every portion that sits in your plate but you ended up struggling to finish the entire contents of that plate? Let me tell you that the eyes eat more than the stomach. Yes, that’s true! I am going through the same situation right now. On my ‘Digital’ plate, I have put too many tempting things and I am clearly struggling. I don’t want to put away any of those things that are there on my plate but my stomach is not able to take in all of it. A lot of my time is getting eaten (pun intended) by different social media platforms, leaving very limited time for a blog. I am busier in reading and enjoying the thoughts of others than taking time out to share my thoughts with the world. This is a problem that I acknowledge, accept and realize and now I need to make the effort to also fix it. 

What better way to start working on the problem than to talk about it. So this blog is my return from the sabbatical and now I will make all efforts to bring content on this site more regularly for all of you and for me. 

So what kind of blogs would you like to read from me? Put in your comments and let me know. 

2015: This is How I am avoiding Resolutions

Another year has dawned on us. Phone calls, emails, SMSes, Whatsapp messages wishing each other Happy New Year have been exchanged. 

Now step back and think. What is so special about the New Year? It is just a change of date in the calendar. The sun rose on 1st Jan in the same way as all the other days before that, the weather and the traffic out there is also the same. Even the shows on TV are the same ones!

So then what has changed? The New Year may not change any of these but what a New Year brings with it is something called HOPE. With the advent of the New Year comes a strong sense of optimism. The belief that things will change from here on is what comes to the mind of people. And it is all of these emotions that make one to put together a list of resolutions. Most of them are well aware that they are never able to stick to their resolutions for a pretty long time but yet, year after year, they persist and put together another list, only to get disappointed over the next few days/weeks or months. 

It’s been two years that I have been blogging about how I do not keep any resolutions but rather follow my own model of doing things through the year. The benefit of this model is that there is no disappointment of a resolution breaking. 

So then what are my plans for this year? Am I sticking to the same model or is there a new model that I have developed? I thought a lot about this and then realized that this E Model that I have developed for myself works perfectly for me and at this stage I should not let go of it. Maybe, I should enhance it further, which means retaining a few Es , removing a few and adding a couple of other. Like I had mentioned last year, this E Model is a dynamic model which will keep changing and evolving with each passing year. 

So with that, I once again present my E Model to all of you, with the hope that some of you may also use it and benefit from it:

1. Experience: There are lot of people who like collecting different kinds of things – stamps, coins, match boxes. I like to collect experiences and call myself ‘Collector of Experiences.’ I try and find opportunities to try new things which just make life more exciting and meaningful. At the start of last year, I jumped off a cliff to experience paragliding. Towards the end of the year, I got to experience watching two tennis legends playing live - Roger Federer and Djokovic playing a set against each other at the ITPL. This year also, I plan to try a few new experiences.

2. Exploration: Travel is an important part of my life. One has to have wanderlust in life to truly become an explorer. Travel and reading are the two biggest teachers of life. As long as you have these two teachers in your life, your learning will never stop. One of my personal goals every year is to visit and see atleast three new places. Even when I am travelling for work, I endeavor to check out a few interesting sites of the place that I am visiting. This year will bring its own set of travel diaries. 

3. Extraction: This is a big word. It means absorbing and learning new things either through reading, videos, work, training, etc. Extraction would also mean writing and blogging and extracting thoughts and stories from within. Last year was a slow year for extraction and the plan this year is to rectify that. 

4. Entertainment: All work and no play can make Jack a dull boy. Philosophy of life couldn’t be truer than this. There is so much of content that exists out there – movies, TV Series, YouTube videos, award winning ads. Amongst all the other things that I intend to do in 2015, keeping my entertainment quotient high will be clearly one of the priorities. 

5. Engagement: This is a new E that I am adding to this model. Social media has become an extension of our life and it is something that can’t be escaped. So the best way is to embrace it. But in 2015, I do not want to limit my engagement to the online world. I intend to engage with my friends and families in the offline world too. I will be taking initiatives of catching up with as many people as I possibly can and connecting with their lives once again. 

6. Evolution: This model is incomplete without the addition of Evolution to the model. While I get busy in new experiences and extracting more from the lessons of life, it is also important that I evolve as a person. This evolution has to be mental, physical, financial and intellectual. I would like to see my net worth and balance sheet evolving. I would like to see the log of my running kilometres evolving as well as my acts of empathy and kindness evolving. My relationship with my colleagues and my team should evolve towards a better side. 

Overall, I should evolve as a better human being and the true measure of this will only come from others and their opinion about me rather than my own opinion about myself. 

All of these elements of the E Model are going to be subjective in nature and I will have no way of appraising myself if I do not put down a tracker that is quantifiable and measures how I am doing against each of these elements. So a Tracker has been put in place. 

Before you decide to implement this model in your life, do note that there are two other Es that come as companions for this model – Expenditure and Execution. You cannot win with this model if you do not take the companions along! 

Looking forward to the ‘Exciting’ times ahead in 2015!