Monday, May 25, 2009

Day –2: Public life makes me more responsible

These posts are as part of making my life public in order to be more accountable. You may see the purpose behind such an experiment in this post. And other posts in the series can be had from here.

Briefly, on achievements: On professional life, I could complete small part of a report. Trying to standardize many of my routine activities. Obviously one of such is this series of posts.

Interesting concepts on my mind during the day:

  1. First create the processes, then automate.
  2. Life is all about planning for the future and start working for it to happen.
  3. If there is a cost reduction, whether the savings get added to the bottom-line or passed onto the customer, is very important to the shareholder.
9:45 - 10:30PM Preparation for sleep (Food, brushing, bed arrangements etc). Would update in a separate post what exactly I do.
10:30PM - 5:11 AM Slept. Typically I should wake up around 5:11 AM when my alarm rings. But I woke around 3:30 AM and I have decided to lie down on bed until my alarm rings at usual time. I could sleep again at 4:40AM and woke up on time.
5:11 - 6:20AM Morning thoughts ( Started to plan around standardization of my time usage)
7:30 - 8:30AM Worked on a Excel sheet. Figured out a fundamental mistake that I made previously.
8:30 - 9AM Training to my maid (It is a part of 6 month process to train her so that she would be able do all the household work without my intervention)
9- 9:41AM Morning activities
9:41 - 10 AM Reached to office
10AM – 1:15PM Worked on excel sheet and designed 2 images.
1:15 - 2PM Lunch time and spent with colleagues.
2- 6PM Worked on the partial report.
6PM-7:20PM I was reading e-mails. One of them, I have responded.
7:20 – 8:30PM Reading news articles on web on energy sector.
8:30 – 9PM Reached home and taken bath.
9- 9:30PM Written this post.

Comments on the day: Definitely today is one of the highly unproductive day. However, I am becoming more responsible and I will become much more efficient in the next 6-9 months.

To-do task from tomorrow: I will have to write hourly updates to let myself aware of how I am spending my time.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

My life is public. First on the series!

I will start writing in a interesting template form, for a while please adjust with this raw data. And I will also have to explain some generic tasks that I do regularly which I will do in a separate posts on each of them.

Briefly, on achievements: Today two most important decisions were taken. To implement them, I have decided to make my life public and started to write these posts. Taken rest for the next week.

Woke up at 7AM
7 - 9AM Morning thoughts (Typically I spend my time to think about strategic directions at broad level on my life) . Today I have taken important decisions on my life (will update this after 3 months on what it is!).
9-11 AM Morning activities (Brushing, head-bath, shaving, breakfast, etc)
11-12:30 PM Writing the thoughts behind this "online diary experiment" on this blog and Rural India blog.
12:30 - 1:45 PM Spent time on updating look and feel of both this blog and Rural India blog.
1:45 - 2 PM Lunch
2 - 2:45PM Writing notes on my performance during the last 6 months
2:45 - 3:30PM Written few pending official mails
3:30 to 7:15 Slept as I was awake most of the last night
7:15 to 7:30 Planning
7:30 to 8:15 I was trying to recall what my colleague suggested me on the report that I made. It was hard time, could not recall most of it.
8:15 – 8:30PM Bathing
8:30 – 9:45 PM Writing this diary

Accountability to the world!

This post is about how I am accountable to the world as I consume resources.

Terminology:

Accountability is one of the best way to bring the efficiency into any system. For example, during my Mumbai life, I gave house key to my maid and no one else, and so, she was always accountable to all my household items.

Life is all about the kind of choices we make. We need to be very careful in each and every choice that we choose because those will set the directions.

Past one decade, I have been doing the following experiment (other experiments are here, here). I first publicly announce that I am going to do a particular task and the fear of embarrassment would always make me to be on right track of that task. For example, I announced 6-8 years ago that I never take ice-creams, chocolates, cold-drinks (aeriated soft drinks), etc. During first 2 years, it was very difficult to resist on occassions (like when I go along with close friends). But then, I could resist because I used to feel that someone would question me. However, now I don't have any interest on all of those items but that's a different story.

Standardisation of any activity makes much more efficient. For example, cardboard box or ship container has revolutionized the whole logistics sector. I am working on all of routine tasks to get some more standardized.

External Audit is the one of the best way to improve the processes. I have been doing this experiment for a while(other experiments are here, here). On every task that I do, I make sure that someone who is better at that job would provide their opinion on how I did. This has always resulted tremendous improvement in my thought process.

Blogs are usually opinions/experiences of individuals. In some sense, it is like a diary of an indiviudal/group of people.

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I strongly beleieve I consume much more resources of the world than most of the population in the world. I should be accountable in the sense that I use those resources in an optimal way and for the right use. In order to bring accountability to the world at large, from today I am going to note down what all I do on every day. I expect the readers to audit my actions.

What do I consume?
I consume a lot of intellectual resources such as ideas/results of all previous generations, access to infinite amount of knowledge on this Internet, computing power, etc. Similarly I consume a lot of physical resources such as land, water, air, etc.

What do I produce in return?
My own intellectual ideas.

Whom do I be accountable to?
I should be accountable to current & future generations.

What do I do now?
I will maintain a public diary of all my actions on every day from today (hour by hour format).

Benefits of this process?
At first, as I mentioned above, I announce things first then attempt to do them later. This process makes sure that I am in line with my plans. Secondly, I want to improve the way Ido things. This would be achieved by getting an audit of all my actions by any expert sitting anywhere in the world. This is just similar to the case that, your friend always suggests on your actions.

Goal of this process?
My broader goal is Rural Development. This is just one of the process wherein I want to be evaluated by world at large.

Comments, welcome!