january has been a good month to start with in this new year. i have been able to complete four books in all. the first was outliers (gladwell), the second was one night @ a call centre (chetan bhagat), the third was five point someone ( chetan bhagat) and the fourth was buy-ology by martin lindstorm.
all these books taught me a new perspective towards life. outliers is about how you view success and what it takes to succeed. it is about being in the right place and seizing the opportunity through sheer hardwork and perseverance and hours and hours of practice. a lot of emphasis is placed on the sheer sequnce of events and the most important of all that no one is a self made man and that every one owes something to someone to make it big.
one night @ a call centre is a pacy fiction which actually depicts life through a call centre executive perspective. it explains the life of call centre executives, the travails of their lives, the highs and lows and how the youth of india are going through this revolution and experiencing the first highs of new found freedom and financial independence. it is written in a realistic way and exactly as we keep reading in the newspapers. though a bit overboard at times, the author's creative licence is pardonable as on the whole it makes a good read.
five point someone is a must read for all college entrants and to get to know as to what not to do in an college school leave alone an iit. the book is very good and explains at length as to what all the students do and get into a mess. this book will serve as a good guide to even parents who send their children to college as they can get to know what is the psyche of the students and it is again a realistic portrayal of the activities which students do in colleges. chetan bhagat writes in an engrossing unputdownable manner and his books - 270 odd pages (always) are ones which you can complete from start to finish on a long trip. a good one. five point someone is really good read and we should learn from the same.
buy-ology by martin lindstorm is a book which talks about brain scanning and the techniques of SST ( Steady State Tomography) and EEG (Electroencepelpgraphy) and how our brain and subconscious takes control of us and what we actually say is far from the truth. what we actually buy is determined in 2 seconds says lindstorm and that these are marked by a lot of subconcious decisions which our brain continually makes. in the initial part of the book the concept is often repeated and it looks like the author is over emphaisising the idea and becomes a bit of a drag. however after chapter 4 or so, lindstorm takes us into a wealth of information with excellent insights and anectodal examples to confirmh is theory of neuro marketing. he talks of the birth of this new science and wonders why science and marketing never came together before. he has explored all aspects of inducement which marketeers use to make us buy - right from sex, to religion, to celebirities ( mirror neurons), to senses, colours, use of somatic markers ( events of deep significance in our life which leaves an indelible imprint on our subconscious) etc. a wonderful read and a wealth of information so as to know the next time you buy a product or service, you do so out of a consicous choice and not be ruled or governed by your subconscious.
Tuesday 27 January 2009
Sunday 25 January 2009
books to read for now till december 2009
already done
1. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
2. One night @ a Call Centre - Chetan Bhagat
In Progress
1. Black Swan
2. Buy-ology
3. Five Point Someone
To read by end 2009
1. Why Elephants cant Dance - Louis Gestner
2. the white tiger - adiga - march 2009
3. my experiments with truth - gandhiji - by feb 2009
4. long walk to freedom - nelson mandela - by april 2009
5. blink - tipping point -once again - march 2009
6. fooled by randomness - nicolas taleb - april 2009
7. 3 mistakes of my life - chetan bhagat
8. why should anyone be led by you - garreth jones
9. balanced scorecard - kaplan
10. nlp - sue knight
11. hot, flat and crowded - thomas friedman
12. the world is flat - thomas friedman
13. awaken the giant within - antony robbins
14. unlimited power -antony robbins
15. 8th habit - covey
16. 7 habits - covey
17. first things first - covey
18. principle centred leadership
19. the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid
20. execution - ram charan
21. good to great - jim collins
22. built to last - jim collins
23. trust - covey jr.
24. human value proposition - dave ulrich
25. human resource champions - dave ulrich
26. human resource scorecard - dave ulrich
27. daily lessons - antony robbins - 365 days
28. arthashastra -
29. the little prince
30. Freakonomics - Tim Hartford
31. Undercover economist - Tim Hartford
32. Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
33. Atlast Shrugged - Ayn Rand
34. Foutain Head - Ayn Rand
35. Third Wave - Toffler
36. Future Shock - Toffler
37. Slumdog Millionaire - Vikas Swarup
38. Maximum City
39. Tao of Leadership
40. Monk who sold the ferrari - Robin Sharma - again
41. You can win - Shiv Kera
42. Managing from the Heart - Arun Wakhlu
43. Case of the Bonsai Manager - R Goapalakrishnan
44. Road Less Travelled - M Scott Peck
45. The Goal
46. Emotional Intelligence
47. Working with Emotional Intelligence
48. Panchatantra - Arthur Ryder
49. Prinicpal Upanishads - S Radhakrishnan
50. Discovery of India - Jawaharlal Nehru
51. History of India
52. Civics of Children - Indian Political, Executive, Judicial and Legislative structure.
53. Charles Handy - 3 books
54. Peter Drucker - 5 books
55. Tom Peters - 3 books - In search of Excellence, Passion for Excellence, Managing in Chaos
56. Am I a Hindu?
57. Bible
58. Koran
59. Gita
60. Ramayana - C Rajagopalachari
61. Mahabaratha - C Rajagopalachari
1. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
2. One night @ a Call Centre - Chetan Bhagat
In Progress
1. Black Swan
2. Buy-ology
3. Five Point Someone
To read by end 2009
1. Why Elephants cant Dance - Louis Gestner
2. the white tiger - adiga - march 2009
3. my experiments with truth - gandhiji - by feb 2009
4. long walk to freedom - nelson mandela - by april 2009
5. blink - tipping point -once again - march 2009
6. fooled by randomness - nicolas taleb - april 2009
7. 3 mistakes of my life - chetan bhagat
8. why should anyone be led by you - garreth jones
9. balanced scorecard - kaplan
10. nlp - sue knight
11. hot, flat and crowded - thomas friedman
12. the world is flat - thomas friedman
13. awaken the giant within - antony robbins
14. unlimited power -antony robbins
15. 8th habit - covey
16. 7 habits - covey
17. first things first - covey
18. principle centred leadership
19. the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid
20. execution - ram charan
21. good to great - jim collins
22. built to last - jim collins
23. trust - covey jr.
24. human value proposition - dave ulrich
25. human resource champions - dave ulrich
26. human resource scorecard - dave ulrich
27. daily lessons - antony robbins - 365 days
28. arthashastra -
29. the little prince
30. Freakonomics - Tim Hartford
31. Undercover economist - Tim Hartford
32. Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
33. Atlast Shrugged - Ayn Rand
34. Foutain Head - Ayn Rand
35. Third Wave - Toffler
36. Future Shock - Toffler
37. Slumdog Millionaire - Vikas Swarup
38. Maximum City
39. Tao of Leadership
40. Monk who sold the ferrari - Robin Sharma - again
41. You can win - Shiv Kera
42. Managing from the Heart - Arun Wakhlu
43. Case of the Bonsai Manager - R Goapalakrishnan
44. Road Less Travelled - M Scott Peck
45. The Goal
46. Emotional Intelligence
47. Working with Emotional Intelligence
48. Panchatantra - Arthur Ryder
49. Prinicpal Upanishads - S Radhakrishnan
50. Discovery of India - Jawaharlal Nehru
51. History of India
52. Civics of Children - Indian Political, Executive, Judicial and Legislative structure.
53. Charles Handy - 3 books
54. Peter Drucker - 5 books
55. Tom Peters - 3 books - In search of Excellence, Passion for Excellence, Managing in Chaos
56. Am I a Hindu?
57. Bible
58. Koran
59. Gita
60. Ramayana - C Rajagopalachari
61. Mahabaratha - C Rajagopalachari
a new year - new resolutions
the new year is always exciting as it gives us an opportunity to redeem ourserlves through some new resolutions and actions. this is a psychological issue. as anotny robbins says that if you want to change yourself you need not wait for the new year - you just need the will and start doing it for 21 days at a stretch and lo !! you would have formed the habit. however we humans have the uncanny ability of being able to very rigourously breaking what we promise ourselves. the "outliers" do not do that. they just be at it.
some of these insights have made me more wiser and i now make the following resolutions:
1. first blog more regularly - doing this now - target atleast 4 posts per month
2. read one book a week ( for 2009 - i am on target - completed Outliers, One night @ call centre and on my way to complete buy-ology, black swan and five point someone)
3. wake up in the mornings at 5 a.m.
4. exercise more regularly - daily 30 minutes - purchased a bicycle
5. eat right and at regular time intervals - less or zero oil, no sugar, very low salt
6. sleep more - get atleast 7 hours sleep
7. no coffee/tea - only water
8. get back into shape by dec 31 2009 - metrics - bm1 -24 ( 31 now); 80 kg (104 now);
9. pay off my housing loan
10. be in touch with friends - emails, phones, letters
11. get medical attention right - mother, daughter, wife
12. meditate daily - pray or be in silence for 15 minutes daily - be more calm and appreciate other view points
13. maintain daily learning log
14. do a lot of extenral benchmarking - professionally
15. add skills to cv - be able to regularly update
16. surf the net more regularly for learning
17. be more regular with my ta/da and medical reimbursements
18. get back to my habit of keeping track of daily spends and tallying of spends and money available
19. get into serious investments and start atleast now to create wealth for my child and family
20. give back to society by getting to help others - csr hours to be clocked by me in my personal time/official time whenever and wherever I can - find out causes where I can work and contribute to society
21. create a personal vision for me - vision 2015
22. attend all family functions
23. create a family tree
24. sort out all old pending issues on personal front with regard to homes - bangalore, tirunelveli and others.
25. watch less of television - read more - magazines, newspapers etc.
this is indeed an ambitious list to achieve in a year and will really test out the will and action orientation of mine. the good news is that atleast I have started off on most of these and will now need to keep track of achievements on this.
this is the best start i have made and I hope to capitalize on this.
some of these insights have made me more wiser and i now make the following resolutions:
1. first blog more regularly - doing this now - target atleast 4 posts per month
2. read one book a week ( for 2009 - i am on target - completed Outliers, One night @ call centre and on my way to complete buy-ology, black swan and five point someone)
3. wake up in the mornings at 5 a.m.
4. exercise more regularly - daily 30 minutes - purchased a bicycle
5. eat right and at regular time intervals - less or zero oil, no sugar, very low salt
6. sleep more - get atleast 7 hours sleep
7. no coffee/tea - only water
8. get back into shape by dec 31 2009 - metrics - bm1 -24 ( 31 now); 80 kg (104 now);
9. pay off my housing loan
10. be in touch with friends - emails, phones, letters
11. get medical attention right - mother, daughter, wife
12. meditate daily - pray or be in silence for 15 minutes daily - be more calm and appreciate other view points
13. maintain daily learning log
14. do a lot of extenral benchmarking - professionally
15. add skills to cv - be able to regularly update
16. surf the net more regularly for learning
17. be more regular with my ta/da and medical reimbursements
18. get back to my habit of keeping track of daily spends and tallying of spends and money available
19. get into serious investments and start atleast now to create wealth for my child and family
20. give back to society by getting to help others - csr hours to be clocked by me in my personal time/official time whenever and wherever I can - find out causes where I can work and contribute to society
21. create a personal vision for me - vision 2015
22. attend all family functions
23. create a family tree
24. sort out all old pending issues on personal front with regard to homes - bangalore, tirunelveli and others.
25. watch less of television - read more - magazines, newspapers etc.
this is indeed an ambitious list to achieve in a year and will really test out the will and action orientation of mine. the good news is that atleast I have started off on most of these and will now need to keep track of achievements on this.
this is the best start i have made and I hope to capitalize on this.
Thursday 2 October 2008
Sunday 13 July 2008
the poor and the needy
today is a landmark milestone day for me. i have been through an intense process of human emotions and i experienced first hand the flow of emotions and how it effects lives of human beings.
today life's superficial things, the malls, the stores, the new airports, the unnecessary things makes life more complicated.
if we actually pause a little before we do anything and see whether it adds value to some one in the value chain we will stop doing a lot of unncessary things.
why waste money on unwanted things when there are so many poor and needy people all around us?
how do you eliminate poverty? - education, entrpreneurship, energy
will some one have the resolve to do this? why that someone should not be us ourselves rather than waiting for others to do?
madhu
13th july 2008
today life's superficial things, the malls, the stores, the new airports, the unnecessary things makes life more complicated.
if we actually pause a little before we do anything and see whether it adds value to some one in the value chain we will stop doing a lot of unncessary things.
why waste money on unwanted things when there are so many poor and needy people all around us?
how do you eliminate poverty? - education, entrpreneurship, energy
will some one have the resolve to do this? why that someone should not be us ourselves rather than waiting for others to do?
madhu
13th july 2008
Sunday 27 January 2008
The Rocky Inspiration
I happened to chance on this video while surfing. It has now become one of my all time favourites. It is about Sylvester "Rocky" Stallone. I did not know of Stallones single minded passion for winning in Hollywood until I heard this story.
Antony Robbins narrates this in a wonderful manner in all under 10 minutes and this is another inspiration for me.
The thing to watch for and learn is that how Rocky believed in himself and really pushed hard and tried tried till he succeeded. More importantly he did not forget his good old friend his dog which he had sold for 25 $ when he did not have food to eat and then later purchased the same dog by giving 15000$ and a role for that owner in Rocky.
This video makes for interesting listening and is very moving.
A lot to learn for all of us. We should learn the lessons of
a) conviction
b) belief in oneself
c) never allow defeats to tie you down
d) always try try till you succeed.
Happy listening.
Madhu Raghunath
Chennai
27/1/2008
Antony Robbins narrates this in a wonderful manner in all under 10 minutes and this is another inspiration for me.
The thing to watch for and learn is that how Rocky believed in himself and really pushed hard and tried tried till he succeeded. More importantly he did not forget his good old friend his dog which he had sold for 25 $ when he did not have food to eat and then later purchased the same dog by giving 15000$ and a role for that owner in Rocky.
This video makes for interesting listening and is very moving.
A lot to learn for all of us. We should learn the lessons of
a) conviction
b) belief in oneself
c) never allow defeats to tie you down
d) always try try till you succeed.
Happy listening.
Madhu Raghunath
Chennai
27/1/2008
Saturday 12 January 2008
Moving People
One of the best examples of moving a set of people or crowd was learnt by me during my Julius Ceasar's class. Our professor used to dramatise the entire Mark Antony funeral speech of Ceasar and I was so moved by the power of Anotny 's oration as written by Shakespeare. I used this verse for a declamation contest and won a prize for the same.
After many years now, I had to chance upon this video and was surprised to find out that what I had visualised in mind was nearly the same as to what is portrayed in this video.
I really would say that this is one of the best examples which we can use to turn a disadvantageous situation to that of an advantage. You will need to see this video fully to really appreciate the power of oration and the use of Rhetorics in speech.
It is said that Brutus was a better orator than Mark Antony yet Mark Antony won over the people with this speech because of three reasons:
1. He allowed Brutus to speak first
2. He spoke in verse while Brutus spoke in plain language
3. He used rhetorics while Brutus did not use the same.
" And yet Brutus is an honourable man" so infuriated the mob that they went baying for his blood. Mark Antony then times the reading of the will till the end and makes people to have a lagniappe by announcing the bonanza in Ceasar's will at the end.
Rosuing of people's passion - " here was a Ceasar and when comes such another ?.... Never Never" ultimate turning around of people accomplished. I would use this anyday to drive home the power of conviction and passion in one's belief. A Classic masterpiece.
This classical piece shows how one invidual with faith in himself can overturn a set of events to his advantage even though you might be at an absymal level of despair.
Do we draw lessons for us from this? Definitely yes. What to do we draw from this speech - one of my favourites:
1. Conviction
2. Passion
3. Clarity in thought
4. Fearlessness
5. Ability to use trump cards ( Ceasar's will)
6. Using judgement to step on the pedal ( Antony's review of public comments in between his speech by pausing and waiting for people's comments).
Excellent video to learn from. Happy viewing and learning.
Chennai
12/01/08
After many years now, I had to chance upon this video and was surprised to find out that what I had visualised in mind was nearly the same as to what is portrayed in this video.
I really would say that this is one of the best examples which we can use to turn a disadvantageous situation to that of an advantage. You will need to see this video fully to really appreciate the power of oration and the use of Rhetorics in speech.
It is said that Brutus was a better orator than Mark Antony yet Mark Antony won over the people with this speech because of three reasons:
1. He allowed Brutus to speak first
2. He spoke in verse while Brutus spoke in plain language
3. He used rhetorics while Brutus did not use the same.
" And yet Brutus is an honourable man" so infuriated the mob that they went baying for his blood. Mark Antony then times the reading of the will till the end and makes people to have a lagniappe by announcing the bonanza in Ceasar's will at the end.
Rosuing of people's passion - " here was a Ceasar and when comes such another ?.... Never Never" ultimate turning around of people accomplished. I would use this anyday to drive home the power of conviction and passion in one's belief. A Classic masterpiece.
This classical piece shows how one invidual with faith in himself can overturn a set of events to his advantage even though you might be at an absymal level of despair.
Do we draw lessons for us from this? Definitely yes. What to do we draw from this speech - one of my favourites:
1. Conviction
2. Passion
3. Clarity in thought
4. Fearlessness
5. Ability to use trump cards ( Ceasar's will)
6. Using judgement to step on the pedal ( Antony's review of public comments in between his speech by pausing and waiting for people's comments).
Excellent video to learn from. Happy viewing and learning.
Chennai
12/01/08
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