Passion and talent

This seems unfortunate but probably is true.

Sometimes we have a passion for something but not enough talent to make an impact with it or bring food to our table or both.

That should not be a problem as it is always possible to modify our course of action to suit our talent.

Let us says I am passionate about becoming a singer but don’t have enough talent to become one. I can try for many years but then come to realize my limits and move on to something related I can do and still satisfy my passion in some way. May be I would open a recording studio for talented singers and make it easy for them to be successful like I wanted to be.

The problem starts when the intensity of my passion makes me believe that I need to keep working hard despite lacking talent. Or the pride comes in the way of accepting the fact that my talent is not enough for my passion.

In a world echoed with “follow your passion”, changing yourself might be hard or heart breaking but is inevitable when your passion is not working for you.

Sometimes, the earlier, the better.

Free teaching, paid teaching and youtube

Let us suppose you know something which is rare and unique and you have spent good number of years to learn that. And now you want to teach your skills in exchange for a decent amount of money to make your ends meet. Ok, fair enough.

But the problem is that if you are not teaching something free on your blog or (more popularly) on your youtube channel, people don’t know you, or, even if they know you, they are not convinced enough that you know something valuable. This is mostly because other experts are successfully proving themselves as real experts by making great videos on youtube.

So you get the hint and you join the race and start teaching people free by making beautiful, interesting and useful videos. Your business strategy could be that you will teach some stuff free on youtube and will save some stuff for your paid offline classes.

But you will soon discover someone who is teaching EVERYTHING free on youtube. He is not interested to make any money from teaching his skills or may be he is just content with the youtube ad revenue. He is your competitor in securing ‘likes’ and ‘subscribers’. Obviously you don’t want be left behind and you will try to do even better than that guy.

You get the idea. It is becoming more and more difficult to over charge people for teaching a skill. If you won’t teach the secrets, there will be always someone else ready to do that. This seems to be the direction of learning and teaching in future and this is good for learning in general by making it free or very low cost.

Ok, there may be some people who are not good self-learner or some people who are in hurry and quickly want a personal coach to help them but majority is going to become self-learner sooner or later. They now have access to your knowledge as well as access to 100s of experts similar to you. And they have the incentive to become self-learner; they are saving money with free learning.

All is not lost for teachers who want to make money from teaching.

Seth Godin successfully runs his program altMBA charging $4,450 per learner.  This is after he is giving us best of his insights and creativity in his daily blog for the last 10 years as well as many videos, books and facebook live sessions.

Surely following Seth Godin example is not easy.

Then there are creators who teach and also create things.

… I am more likely to buy a piece of wood furniture from someone who is teaching on youtbue how to do wood working.

… A wordpress plugin developer will increase chances of his plugin sales by teaching how to develop plugins on his or her youtube channel.

… A lady who teaches cooking and sells home made food.

Exciting times ahead for learning and teaching.

 

One day I am going to be master of trade

One of my teachers used to say that if you would start doing something on daily basis and will keep doing and thinking about it you would start getting ideas which you have never read in any book or no one has ever told you. Kind of divine instructions for you.

Quality vs. quantity debate is an interesting one especially when it comes to putting our effort in a new venture which involves lots of learning. I am in the ‘quantity camp’.

… Taking hundreds and thousands of photos and then selecting a few out of them as a photographer has a good chance to give us nice photos than shooting only a few ones and also the ability to distinguish between good photos and bad photos.

… Writing lots and lots of code as a programmer can make us confident. Learning from trying to write only few lines of perfect code is close to impossible.

… Editing lots of videos will surely going to teach us each and every aspect of your editing software.

… Trying to sell or market to 1000 clients will give us lot more feed back and insights into people behavior for learning and better action than just trying to selling to 10 people.

… Making dozens of websites instead of a selected few will teach us each and every aspect of the trade.

A person’s self-learning skills come into action when he is doing lot of effort by making mistakes and then improving on these mistakes with next work.

And in addition to learning and rectifying our mistakes, we also start learning shortcuts in doing the work. This in turn speeds up our work.

It probably cannot be defined how long we have to do lot of work before we are a master but in my own experience it should be around 3 years or may be more.

And of course we are going to improve every day during this 3 years period.

This interesting story (from this website) about quality vs. quantity is about creating art but it should relate to most efforts.

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

One day we are going to master and we will do only what is needed and will do it very precisely but before that we need to do lot of work.

So what are the fears for not doing quantity work:

… Fear of wasting time.

… Fear of people expectations of quality.

… Feeling stupid.

etc.

The 3 years time I proposed above for doing quantity work may seem too long but I have seen people spend more than 3 years on planning and thinking and without taking an action to start something; mostly because they want to be the best from the beginning.

So what you have done so far in life? Have you produced only quality or worked on quantity? Or may be just planning something for the time being?

Is fear of failure justified?

Life of a student is life of compliance. Every day a student has to comply with the course outline and strive to get the best possible grades. His teachers warn him not to fail; his parents will keep him telling not to disappoint them in terms of grades. In our closely knit society, close relatives are also watching him closely. All this process is instilling fear of failure in a student; on daily basis for up to 12, 14 or 16 years of education.

Although we need to fix the school, college and universities in the long term but what can we do in the short term?

There are some great quotes on fear of failure. Search Internet for ‘fear of failure quotes’ and you will find ample. Or you can click here or here to see some I searched for.

Are these quotes, success-from-failure stories or occasional sermons by some motivational speaker good enough to undo this years long damage to a kid? Should we expect that kid to be fearless and embrace the world of uncertainty by starting his own venture or doing something he loves?

Quotes, success stories, sermons are good but not quite good enough.

We need to make that kid embrace art, any kind of art. He or she needs to create something; as much as possible.

Singing? Yes

Film making? Yes

Wood working? Yes

Cooking? Yes

Blogging? Yes

Creating art is something which will make kids feel good, make them think creatively and they won’t feel bad with bad performance. After all they are just having fun.

One more thing; art is important for your kid but it is also important for you; parent and for you; grand parent. It is still not too late to be happy.

Here is a 2 minutes 10 seconds video by Seth Godin explaining all this beautifully with pencil sketches.

The easiest business to do

There was this discussion going on in my office with friends today on starting a new small business which requires minimum effort. In my personal opinion and experience, selling and/or marketing (including branding) are the toughest part of day to day business activities of a new business. This is assuming that you can create or source the product with reasonably good quality.

So are there any businesses which require minimal efforts so that a new entrant in business world can quickly establish himself reasonably? Food business seems to be the answer.

Though it is probably tough as well as investment intensive to establish a high end food outlet, a basic one which fulfills daily needs of people should be successful from the beginning.

Try this. Today or tomorrow when you visit market, see how much effort a food outlet is doing on selling compared to other businesses around. Probably none; they are busy delivering orders.

Lee Iacocca‘s biography was one of those few business books I read very early in my career when I was trying to find the magic formula for business success. One of his advice which I still remember was:

My father always drilled two things into me:

Never get into a capital-intensive business, because the bankers will end up owning you. (I should have paid more attention to this particular piece of advice!)

And when times are tough, be in the food business, because no matter how bad things get, people still have to eat.

Though I have been through the phase of business over the years where I learned reasonably good selling skills, there is no harm in planning and starting a business which requires little or no selling effort.

 

Sleeping with doubt

Case in point 1:

There was a time when I had to do lot of effort to get a new client; all kinds of sales pitches, demos, references in print form, company profile, showing up in a nice business dress and what not. After a certain years of work a new customer now usually means is a phone call and some negotiations on price and deal is closed.

But this new client was different. There was a long phone interview which was not ‘satisfactory’ to them and I had to invite them to my office. The business owner visited with his IT manager who brought a written list of questions to ask before the deal could be closed.

What if we grow 300% next year? Will your software able to manage our business?
What if all the 3 internet connections we have stop functioning?
What if the place your server is hosted is flooded?
What if you stop doing this business and start some other business?
What if there is a technical problem which you cannot solve?
What if all the data backups are destroyed?
What if you go bankrupt?
What if you get too rich and do not have interest in doing any business?

IT manager kept asking me these questions while the business owner was sitting on the other side enjoying his tea and pretending that that he was ‘above’ those petty questions.

I have shared just a sample of the actual questions asked. These questions were enough to offend me. But since it was first meeting with this future client and since a big amount was involved I had to show exceptional level of patience.

Patience paid off and deal was closed. And none of the questions he asked ever mattered to them afterwards.

Case in point 2:

Few years ago I used to deliver a one day session on how to do business through Internet. The basic theme was introducing people how websites worked, how internet payments worked and how difficult or easy was to setup an online web shop using free or paid online tools. This session also included some online marketing tips.

Attending one session was enough to get an idea. Since it was a free session some people attended more than once. But there were a few people who attended as many as they could.

There was always a question/answer session after my presentation. One of the regular attendees was always quick to ask many questions every time. A few of which I can remember off my head were like:

What if my product is not liked by my customers?
What if customers return the product misusing COD terms?
What if a competitor starts selling a cheaper product?
What if my website goes down during peek hours?
What if my website gets hacked?
What if my competitor builds a better website?
What if my supplier does not supply me products when I need?
What if my marketing fails?
What if my partner cheats me?
What if I get a very big order?
What if I don’t get any order?

That guy never started any business.

My case is that we cannot answer all future questions today. Let us leave some questions, may be most of them, unanswered today and start doing something. The doing part is more important then keep inventing questions in our mind and then looking for their answers. Let us live and sleep with doubt and trust ourselves to be able to answers tricky questions tomorrow or day after tomorrow or next month or next year. Getting rid of the habit of ‘deciding-everything-today’ is not easy but worth the try. You may sleep well by sleeping with doubt.

How do you know you are stuck in life?

Yesterday evening I attended the funeral prayers of an uncle of mine who died at the age of 75. Last few decades of his life were so miserable that people often quoted his example when describing how bad life could be. He did not have any kids or friends and his house was at a terrible place surrounded by garbage and dirty water from sewers. His wife, a very intelligent lady who died few years ago, lived a terrible life with him. She had to relay on her own income of teaching for her pocket money. She probably could have lived a better and beautiful life if she had not married at all instead of marrying him.

But the irony was he could change his miserable life himself without any effort. He had good amount of funds in terms of hard cash, gold and a real estate property which he made from his hard work in his young life. He could, overnight, become a different person by spending that money. But instead he choose to live a miserable life and left all his wealth to people who were hardly part of his life.

He was stuck in life; a stagnation that had happened many decades before his death.

While sitting at his house, close to his dead body, my brother asked why this happened and, despite all life experience, why he was not able entertain a thought in his mind which could change his life?

It was a difficult question to answer. We could think of all small things he could do for a better life but that was not the answer of the above question. Why he did not actually take any step to improve even when knowing every thing and having the resources to do that? What was in his mind which prevented good things to happen in his life?

Or did he really know he was stuck in life?

Probably not.

It is so easy to single out other people who are stuck in life but probably close to impossible to point out the same thing about ourselves. But if getting stuck in life is a possibility for others then it is also a possibility for us. And this departed soul was facing the same dilemma; he did not know he was stuck and he did not change his life for better.

This is a terrible thought, but real possibility, that we are also stuck in our life in a way we are not realizing.

Having a life style where we keep experimenting and changing our work habits, keep questioning the our ideology of life and keep helping others may be the simplest recipe to not get stuck. May be there are other ways to not get stuck but we can find them by keep questioning our ideology of life as we live through life.

That uncle …

Everyone has that uncle who had his fair share of achievements in life and is now living a retired life. But his future plans at the age of 70 still make sense to ears. You sit with him for few minutes and he will quickly chalk out a perfect looking grand business plan. Like ..

.. We shall construct a big plaza on mall road (100 stories high to be exact) which will be built by acquiring land from a friend on the promise of quick payment once project starts rolling. Then we shall design and sell shops and offices in that plaza with advance cash from customers. Since the location is a prime location, all shops and offices will be sold out quickly. Then we shall build that plaza with the collected money and we shall also payoff the land owner. The top floor will not be sold and we shall keep it for our offices. And of course, with the newly earned money, we shall buy a helicopter which will use the helipad built on the roof of top floor.

Planning the future is broad level thinking and makes us feel good. It is important because unless we have a plan and we have a target to achieve we cannot go any where. But it is also addictive because sometimes the difference in do-able planning and day-dreaming is not much.

On the other hand detail level thinking is about getting things done; to move your grand project one step further into success. Detail level thinking, and work, involves small steps to be planned and taken. Every project worth doing requires lots of small steps. Many times, these small steps take lots of time; especially when new learning is involved; like learning some jquery to create that special effect in the website requested by you new client. Unfortunately planning and doing these small steps is not as sexy as day dreaming the big picture.

The reason is that small steps don’t really give us a sense of achievement and force us to leave our comfort zone and do something. So we keep postponing as long as we can and here enters in our life what is commonly known as ‘procrastination’. By procrastinating we waste much more time than was needed to complete those small steps which would have push our project in the right direction and would have give us real sense of achievement; and pleasure.

When we have procrastinated long enough, we start questioning the worthiness of our project-in-hand. It is already delayed so is it worth while to spend more time on it and complete? Will it be any good at all? Isn’t it time to plan a brand new project which is do-able? Let us day dream.

In June, 2005 one of my friends announced that 2007 will be the year of freedom for him. He was doing an office job and was sick and tired of his job due to his bad boss and long working hours. I asked why not today, instead of 2007. His reply was that he wanted to make a good foolproof plan and he was confident enough to plan and achieve by 2007. Fast forward 11 years, it is now 2016 and that gentleman is still doing the same job with the same company and under the same boss.

There was a time when we took pleasure in doing small things without big planning and that was when we were kids and we were addicted to learning by ‘doing’ which was called ‘playing’ at that time. For most people that time has long gone. It now takes strict personal discipline to do new learning and to take small steps for success.

My own ‘cure’ is that once I have made the big plan and wrote it somewhere, I try to switch off my brain from thinking for few hours and start doing things, the small steps, as a robot. In 1995, I completed my first big project in six months and the secret was that I forced myself to work two hours, just two hours, every day; without worrying about achievement or consequences. Although it looks simple but working two hours daily a very hard discipline to adhere to but the final reward was worth the effort.

Writing a todo list for broad level and detail level plans, even if we do not follow it strictly, plays an important role in helping us start doing detail level work. With our broad level planning frozen in writing, we literally delegate the thinking work to our todo list and stop worrying about forgetting any thing important and suddenly we have energy to do the detail level work.

A tribute to all dads

Today is father’s day and, while I don’t like these ‘days’ much, I still feel the need to write something about fathers; my father, your father and all fathers out there.

My late father was a great dad, as great as your dad is or as anyone else dad is. I cannot imagine there are any bad, or even not-so-good, dads.

There may be some dads who are extremely successful in their lives and have been able to buy everything for their kids; bikes, cars, big houses, foreign travel. They are great dads. Their sons and daughters love them and are proud of them.

Then there are dads who have not been able to become as successful as they wanted to or as much as their kids wished. They have worked hard but probably not able to buy every thing for their kids; good house, good clothes and not even good education. And some down the road have not been able to buy even good food for their kids. These dads are not lesser heroes than any other dads; they are, in fact, bigger heroes than other successful dads. They have not only worked hard but also, unnecessarily, kept the pain of regret in their heart to not come up to their own or their kids expectation; If you have such a dad, you need to take care of him while you can.

Then there are dads who ultimately commit suicide because they cannot bear the thought of going empty hands back to their house from their work and face their kids. For them humiliation of a failed father is way too much. Without realizing that being bankrupt is not their fault but the failure of people and society around them. These are the dads who would have been super dads, better than all dads, if they lived and were successful.

My father was a learned person with two master degrees to his credit, author of over 100 books in Urdu and English and countless articles published in The Pakistan Times, The Nation, The Muslim, The Frontier Times and other newspapers. He started writing on Islamic Jurisprudence from the age of 26 and his last article was published at at age of 72, 6 days after his death. His home library contained thousands of books in Urdu, English and Arabic. He has given me big enough target of hard work to match and I have long way to go to match it. When I think about his achievements I feel good.

But that’s not the point of being a great father. My father could be completely illiterate, done something other than literary work, like work as a laborer in factory or somewhere else, and still a great father. Great fatherhood does not come from a particular kind of education, job or wealth. My grand father was like that and he was still a great father.

Some of the great things that happened to me because of my father are:

1. He actively helped me pursued my hobby of playing with electronics and then computers, buying me an expensive computer, without worrying what I will do with that. I remember that he had announced a Rs: 100 prize for me in my 8th class if I could create a working radio from components.
2. I was asked, expected and motivated to actually work (as a salesman on a shop) after my 10th class exams and then 12th class exams. The biggest learning of my life and getting rid of any shyness and ego of working outside my home and by doing a petty job.
3. I was never forced in the choice of my study subjects or future direction. I was free to become whatever I wanted to. I could change my decision every day and he was not worried.
4. My grades never mattered to him. He was ok as long as I got passing marks.
5. I, along with my brothers and sister, were regularly taken to library to study and borrow books. This was the start of the development of self-learning which then never ceased.
6. He actively worked to help me setup my business after my education helping me with setup of my office.

What could I ask for more?

In addition to wishing your dad a happy fathers’ day, you can also do one more thing to make him happy. And that is to become partially or fully self-reliant as much as soon as possible.

Let us get rid of our local tradition of completing our masters degree on the expense of our fathers money. Start working, start doing something, and earning money. Let your father live his life without worrying about you; the grown up adult.

One final note; Don’t worry if your dad is old fashioned. All great dads are simple and old fashioned. Celebrate that.

Happy father’s days to my father, my kids father and all fathers out there.

Power of focus

Ok, I am as ambitious (is this word a nice substitute for being greedy?) as anyone can be or as every one wants to be. Which means I want to do lots of things; lots of projects; lots of clients; lots of programming; lots of marketing activity, lots of every thing. Unfortunately whenever I try to do lots of things I fail. My productivity grinds to halt which in turn depresses me which then again affects my productivity which then … You get the idea what happens. This is especially true with tech work like computer programming which I have to do as part of my job; I am least productive when I am not focused.

I have heard about people who are multi-tasking and can do many diverse things in one day and still remain producitve. Where are those people? If you know any one let me know.

And the opposite is just as much true. If I do one thing, and just that one thing, then I am super productive. But that then means I have to ignore friends’ calls, any marketing work here and there, need to completely delegate support calls, avoid errands, avoid any ‘recreational’ activity or just about any activity which can take some part of my mind.

This is power of focus.

Focus does not requires effort, it requires will; a strong one. Effort then follows ‘effortlessly’.