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.

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.

 

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’.

Why I broke red traffic signal yesterday

Yesterday I was late from my office and I was in real hurry. I had to cross many traffic red lights without stopping so that I could reach my office on time. Don’t get me wrong. I am usually a law abiding citizen and I do wait at a crossing with red light to turn green before I move. But that day I had some real urgency and I had to break the law.

Now that made me feel guilty as I crossed that red signal. Feeling guilty is not a comfortable feeling. After all who wants to think himself a bad guy? At least I am not the person who will consider myself a ‘criminal’.

So *after* breaking the law I started looking for ‘genuine’ reasons why I broke the law.

… I was doing it once and first time so it was not that bad.

… I was not trying to harm any one, so it was ok.

… I could get fired for being late, make it difficult to provide bread and butter to my family which is a much bigger responsibility.

… Our government is not doing anything for jobless people and I could be jobless. I had to take the law in my hand by breaking this traffic signal because government is not doing enough. Makes sense. Right?

… I help a charity organization with regular contribution which works to help people who are suffering from poverty and that cause would be hurt if I would not cross that signal. May be God has sent me in this world to take care of these vulnerable people with my contribution.

Slowly I started feeling better from that guilt. In fact I started feeling stupid for that feeling of guilt and I praised myself to take that step to break the traffic signal. The last justification I mentioned above, being part of a bigger cause for the sake of humanity, made me feel warn.

Suddenly, on my last turn, a big truck, driven recklessly, broke traffic signal and rammed into my car. My car was crushed and I was dead; instantly; right on the spot.

(Dedicated to those people who think killing others for a reason, they have justification for, is ok. Written on the day of deadly bomb blast in Gulshan Iqbal park, Lahore which killed 69 people. Photo by Dawn newspaper.)

Recipe for happiness

I was looking at the interior of a nicely decorated shop close to my house and then I noticed this and captured on my mobile phone.

By the way my own personal recipe of happiness is doing something and, preferably, creating something and not just sitting idle.

Simplifying the struggle of finding a good job

Few days ago I was there in a superstore very early. In the vegetables section staff was unloading fresh vegetables and arranging on shelves and displays. One of the staff members, wearing same uniform like others, was working quickly and enthusiastically, helping his colleagues along with his own work, making eye contact with customers, saying hello to them, smiling as well as advising others. The other staff was like the usual lot; people who seem to be forced to do the ‘labor of work’.

I asked someone who was he and he told me that he was, as I guessed, head of the department but worked just like them early morning.

And then I thought of this:

After a great qualification and may be some work experience, you are looking for a great employer to hire your at equally great salary. That makes sense as long as you are lucky and able to find a good company with a great boss who hires you.

What if you cannot find a good job with a great boss? Are you out of luck? Should you stay unemployed?

No. You just need to reverse your thought process and become a great employee at any job you get. There is a good chance you will get noticed and rewarded what you deserve; even if after a while.

Ok, you may complain that hard work is not rewarded and other people just take advantage of ‘sincere and hardworking’ people like you without reciprocating. But then this is also the argument offered by a good employer.

So choice is yours; you can keep looking for the best employer or you can reverse your thought process.

Solitude on a job

Sometimes I get support calls from my customers which just surprise me. The question asked is such a trivial one which one could have answered himself or herself after a few moments of thinking of alternatives or possibilities. So when I ask them to ‘check again’ your problem in software they reply “It is ok now. What have you done?”. And they don’t believe me that I have not done anything and the fault was in their observation.

This lack of attention has certaininly not to do anything with education. Their office activities are probably occupying their minds so much that they find little time to concentrate even for few minutes on a particular thing. They are thinking too fast. Situation has been made more miserable with the flood of information from new Internet and mobile channels like text messages and social media.

One solution could be to give 10-30 minutes to your employees to be alone so that they don’t do anything but think what they are doing and how they could do it better; may be without any access to Internet and mobile. This will benefit probably both of them; employer and employee.

Why do your own business – A discussion with Mian Shafqat Ali, former president LCCI

https://soundcloud.com/armaghansaqib/why-business-a-discussion-with

An unspoken, ongoing tragedy

It takes 16 years by highly competent educationists to instill fear of failure in you. Fortunately they are ‘lucky’ to have at least 6 hours access to your brain during these 16 years and are highly successful in achieving their ‘goal’ of installing fear of failure.

In all seriousness these educationists are probably doing their best to make you study hard. But their success means a fearful lot of young people who dread even the thought of failure and all the shame associated with it.

Only a few, very resistant souls and exceptional strong minds, survive this, take any number of chances and become successful in ways not taught or thought by their schools or colleges.

Just a sad thing for me.