Sunday Posts

I started 2016 with a surprise discovery: That Bill Gates reads a book a week! I love reading books, yes, the old fashioned paper books, and spend most of my time and money on books. And, yet, I struggle to read as much as I would like to, as life intervenes. The work, the chores, the celebrations and the worries, moments social and the solitary, all present their different challenges inbetween me and an undivided and unwavering commitment to my books. And, yet, here is the man, who earns about $150 every second - if that's one benchmark how valuable his time must be - and who, as Michael Sandel explained, may find stopping and picking up a $50 bill if he spots one lying on the pavement a waste of his time, claiming that he accords highest priority to reading, and even sets aside time when life gets too busy! I know the usual explanation: We are not Bill Gates. Yes, when you earn $150 a second, you do not drive your own car. You can choose who you socialise with. And, indeed,...

I usually measure my life not in terms of what I have, but what I have learned. This approach works for me, particularly as I have very little except a pile of books, but there is one problem with this approach: It does not necessarily tell me whether I am moving forward.  Learning more should be good, but then one can argue that one can not live without learning, and therefore, learning, by itself, is not a benchmark of progress. Put another way, the question to ask is not whether I have learnt new things, but whether I learnt enough. This is indeed a more difficult question to answer. Take, for example, the year of 2016. Even when I struggled in the past, I would usually feel good about doing better year-on-year. But, in comparison, I am approaching the end of 2016 rather bleakly. The year itself has been one of waiting. Last Christmas, I was hoping for some dramatic change, which failed to materialise. And even while I gave up on the plans I made, I was not able to dev...

Higher Education as a business is an American idea, mostly! The American For-Profit Education companies are the largest in the world, and they are no longer American. They have assets - universities, publishing companies, online operations - all over the world. And, they are present in every conversation about Higher Ed in every country, lobbying for For-Profit participation (which many countries do not allow) and privileges (mostly access to public funding for students). How this should be viewed depends on one's point of view, and I did previously argue that some diversity is good for Higher Education sectors in different countries (though my views have evolved since, as I came across Hirschman's argument why private sector education, instead of improving the quality of public sector through competition, actually has the opposite effect). But, regardless of the broader argument, one thing fascinates me about this debate: That American For-Profits point to the student de...

Everyone has an opinion about Trump. Which is okay, because he has an opinion about everyone. So, though I do not get to vote in the American Presidential election, I shall add my two bits! Right now, after South Carolina, the path to a Trump-Clinton match-up looks clearer than it ever was. All the predictable candidates of the Republican field, save Marco Rubio, have started dropping off, and soon, Trump would achieve what seemed completely unachievable even a few weeks ago - sound the most sensible among the group! His economics may eventually sound better than Kasich, his xenophobia more moderate than Cruz, and his common sense more than, well if he had it at all, Carson's. Oh, Rubio! Though he is still going strong, he may indeed be too smooth, too official, to go all the way in a year like this.  Now, if Trump faces Clinton, it will be easy to see it as an ultimate Insider versus Outsider race. There is no one more on the inside than Clinton, she even lived in the Wh...

In a way, 1st January is the strangest day, when the present and the future come together. Our conversations, more than on any other day, centre on things to come. And, that makes this day somewhat special, a brief but momentous journey between the nostalgia of year-end and present-mindedness of the 2nd January. It is, for most of us, both a pause and a spark, to enjoy the present possibilities. One way of seeing it is that we have one day every year for future and one day for the past, and the balance three hundred and sixty three (or four, as in 2016) for living in the present. That proportion sounds about right. Indulging too much on the future, just like being stuck in the past, can be somewhat harmful, obscuring the wonderful and immediate potential of every day. But, as there is value in our past in providing us with a perspective to live, there is value in the future, as it broadens our horizons. A good way to live the present, as the self-help books will tell you, is ...

It is cliche, but I can not still believe that here we are on the last day of the year already. It is a sunny day here in London, an unexpected gift. Cold but not too cold, which is also a good thing given how mild this December so far has been, and yet, the predicted bitter-cold winter of an El Nino year is also nowhere in sight. Having spent most of the year in warmer climates, this feels just right for me, a very welcome situation at the end of a year on the road. The year that ends, for me, was a stop-gap year. I spent the year in, using a computing metaphor, recovery mode, without trying to do anything special, just surviving, keeping my head down. This was exactly like the year I spent immediately after coming to UK, a decade ago, my previous big adventure that led to some disappointments and several serendipity. My learning from that was not to give up on adventures, but to be ready to step back and recover, if needed.  This may indeed make no sense to my friends a...

I wrote about a fresh start in 2016, but unlike all the grand plans of new beginnings I usually make around the year-end, this fresh start was not really that fresh. Rather, I am seeking to be boring, conventional, going back to a professional life etc. Was this about a burn-out, am I giving up, I was asked, and my answer that I am trying to be realistic did not have much weight. After all the years of attempting not to conform, this idea of settling in can only be seen as giving up, rather than a bidding time strategy. The point, of course, is that I am not giving up on my ambition, but seeking a different one. There are certain assumptions I made about my abilities and what I wanted to do, and to be sure, I tried them out. It did not work, or at least did not work the way I expected it. Like a good entrepreneur, I have learned and now, I am trying to pivot. Stepping back and getting back to professional life is not giving up entrepreneurship, but rather seeing my life as a con...