Finally after spending 8 yearsin Karnataka (4 years in Manipal and 4 in Bangalore) I back in North India near to my home :). Joined Samsung, Noida. Working at Wipro was fun, lets see how it goes here!
Joined Samsung Electronics
Chetan Bhagat's 2 states - a lackluster
Recently I came to know about the new novel by Chetan Bhagat named 2 states. I was really eager about this book as I liked his previous two books namely 5 point someone and One night @ call center. So yesterday I went to Landmark with the intent of buying the book, in the book shop I managed to get an empty seat hence couldn't resist myself from reading the book there itself, when I started reading the book initially it seems to be a normal story; there was nothing great in it, but I told myself "be patient and keep reading" but once reached the half way through i.e. some 100 odd pages I told myself enough is enough, this is a crap novel and any further reading is complete wastage of time. 2 states seems to be sequel of 5 point some one, where the Hari of 5 point someone becomes Krish and enters the hallowed portals of IIM Ahemdabad to find his love Ananya, this time she is his classmate instead of professor's daughter and then a normal love story. He is a Punjabi and she is a Tamil Brahmin and their parents are against the inter-caste marriage.
The thing that I used to like about Chetan's novels were the way he portrays the innocent love stories, combined with his witty one liners. But this book falls short of these, there is absolutely no humor and its a boring love story devoid of any adventure. Probably it's time that Chetan comes out of his comfort zone (of amataeur love stories) and try out something new!
Leaving Wipro and Bengaluru
Leaving Wipro is definitely one of the toughest decision in recent times, the same was true while joining also :). During college I had offers from VMWare, GE and Wipro, with the package of Wipro being the least and I still joined it. It has been roller coaster ride at Wipro, in past 4 years I had my share of both the best and worst days; be it having fun with colleagues, spending long time over the pool side in EC chatting with friends or working till late nights and over the weekends. Overall its been a good experience and I am going as a satisfied man. There are number of things that I really like about Wipro but the thing that I really like is its knowledge centricity.
Knowledge centric organization
Knowledge is at the core of Wipro. There is very high focus on the continuous knowledge up-gradation. Wipro library is simply awesome, the collection of books is incredible be it technical, general management or some serious management books. I was really happy with the number of books that I have read here. I know not many companies in India invest so much in books as Wipro does. Also the sort of trainings that we have be it from Wipro employees or from other companies is really good. I still remember when I attended a session on Cloud Computing by an evangelist from Amazon in 2007. Cloud computing became hot in 2008 and Wipro was way ahead in it. Once I attended a training on Social computing and Semantic Web I was really amazed with the presenters, the sort of research that they had done in this field. Before attending the training I thought I had very good knowledge about the topic and during training came to know that it just the tip of iceberg and I need to spend lot of time probably years to reach the level of expertise that these presenters have.
Some bangalore buddies whom I really going to miss
Ravi, Kushal, Santosh and me (Left to right)
Why I still travel by train?
Recently I was on a Diwali visit to my native place Ajmer. By train it takes 48 hours to reach my home. Her Highness told me for this "Are you nuts? You will be traveling for 4 days and staying at home only for 2 days. Can't you just take a flight and avoid this wastage of time?". I just smiled and told hopefully one day I will be able to explain you why I still travel by train. There are several reasons why I still travel by train. Here goes the reason's
1. Affordable : No matter how much the airline guys shout about cheap travel they can't beat Indian Railways in terms of price. I pay 1400 bucks for 3 Tier AC and just 500 for Sleeper class. Now even if u get air ticket for free still u need to pay some 2000-3000 as tax, also the airports are far from city (at least Bangalore airport is far away...its some 50-55 kms from city)
2. Time for yourself : During my travel through train I get 2 full days just for myself without any distraction, there are no managers, no laptop, no work. This way I get sufficient time to think about my career - how I am doing and how to improve it further?. I get time to read my favorite books. I know people will say common you can save lot of time through air travel and read books at home...even though I read lot of books but still my laptop is my biggest distraction, in train there is none.
3. Sight seeing : I travel across the length of the country covering close to 2500 kms. During this travel I get a chance to see the diverse landscapes; from the hilly Western Ghats in Karnataka and Maharashtra, the rivers and lush green mountains on the way to the desiccated areas of Rajasthan. I enjoy watching the farmers toiling their farms with their bullocks, the herdsman driving the cattle. And guess what all this sight seeing for free!!
4. Comfort : As mentioned in case of price, in case of comfort also the low cost airlines can never beat the mighty railways. This is what Shashi Tharoor has to say about economy class airlines "Absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!"
5. The 1960 factor : Inspiration for this came from the movie Love Aaj Kal where the protagonist Veer Singh of 1960 era travels thousands of kilometers for just one glance of his sweetheart. This time it was same for me :)
Hilter's anger over Facebook's acquisition of FriendFeed
A funny video showing Hitler's frustration over Facebook's acquisition of FriendFeed
Productivity woes
A couple of months ago I was going through a "Productivity drought". In office I was shamelessly procrastinating my project work, aimlessly browsing the net, and in home watching any crap movie that I could get (I reached the height when I saw 2-3 Korean movies and that too with no subtitles). During that time I even thought of writing a book with title "101 ways of killing time in office". I came up with this title as during my aimless browsing I even searched for a book with that name and couldn't find one so I thought probably I can jot down my thoughts which may be helpful to other lazy guys:)
Luckily I got a break for 3-4 days from office as I need to travel to my hometown and I was able to think clearly about how can I utilize my time and overcome this indolence.
In general I prefer multitasking. Normally I am involved in following activities
1) Working on a project in office for which my company pays me.
2) Work on a personal project. I try to come-up with some idea, spend time in its initial scoping and if it seems plausible I try to work on its implementation. I don't get a penny for this activity but I spend maximum time on this activity as somehow I find great satisfaction in creating something on my own.
3) Reading books.
To break free from clutches of procrastination I did following
1) Start early - I started waking up early so that I can reach office by 7:30 in morning. I am highly productive during the morning hours as most of my peers come by 10:00 and I can easily concentrate on work.
2) Don't check your mails in first 2 hours of work - Earlier in the morning I used to spend close to 1 hour for checking mails be it official, Yahoo!, GMail and others, check scraps on orkut and read online news. Now I just check my official mails in morning and then start working. I work for 2 hours and then my check mails.
3) Avoid context switching - Normally while working I used to keep opening some sites, blogs, twitter etc and spend some time on them. I noticed that these context switches were really affecting my concentration hence I started cut down on it.
Going Forward
Though these measures definitely helped me in improving my productivity but I still feel there is a lot to be improved. Especially my personal project has taken a beating. I am still in initial phase but I am progressing at snail's pace. Probable steps that may help
1) Set daily/weekly targets - Probably I may need to break down the work in small tasks and set daily and weekly targets to complete them.
2) Timeboxing the task - Timeboxing the tasks by setting time lines for small tasks, probably 60 to 90 minutes and strive to complete it in that time frame.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
