How I read 52 books in 2019…

To start with a confession, the title of this post is a bit untrue. I did not actually “read” 52 books in 2019, I “listened” to 52 audio-books in 2019. While it may not be as impressive as “reading”, I think listening works better for my lifestyle and I feel it may work for you as well.

This post is geared towards explaining how I achieved this feat (#humblebrag) and lay out some steps for you if you would like to experiment with this idea.

How to get started?

First, make a new year resolution/Set a goal — Just kidding :).. We all know those rarely work. For me, reading 52 books was NOT a goal that I set for myself for 2019.

It was quite serendipitous actually; I stumbled on a post on Product Hunt around “Startup book club” in December 2018. The idea of the club was that every 2 weeks the club members will read a non-fiction book from a compiled list based recommended of the likes of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg etc.

The first book that I read as part of the club was “Atomic Habits” and the next one was “Surely, you must be joking Mr. Feynman”. These two got me hooked and I was surprised that instead of taking the expected 4 weeks, I was able to listen to both of them within 2 weeks. Then on, I stopped following the club’s weekly recommendations, but looked ahead at the bigger list for my next picks.

By June 2019, I had listened to roughly 30 audiobooks. That was the first time I thought to myself, hey I could potentially listen to 52 books this year. So although I did not start the year with that goal, but it did become a goal roughly mid year.

So, to get started you need two things —

A book that you’ll like — If you are not enjoying what you are reading, you’ll find excuses to postpone it. If you need some recommendations, I have a list towards the end of this post.
An accountability partner — The book club served as a accountability partner for me. I didn’t want to be the one stuck behind, when rest of the group was moving on to the next book.

Tips for you to listen to more audio-books in 2020

If you already identified the book and and an accountability partner and are looking for ways to find more time in your schedule. Here are a few tweaks I made in my lifestyle which I feel compounded over time and allowed me to read more books —

Replace podcasts with books — A while back, I had decided to spend less time reading random articles on internet and spend that time reading more books. I applied the same logic to my listening time as well, fewer podcasts and more audio books.
Better dead-time management — There are many windows during the day when you have dead-time — commute is one big example, but there are many others such as doing chores around the house, grocery shopping or waiting in the line for the next iPhone (do people still do that?). I utilized those very effectively and you could be assured if I was running an errand, I would have my headphones on and I’ll be zoned in.
Utilizing Public Library —This is something I feel was a true game-changer. I’ve been a long time subscriber of Audible, but that gives you one audio-book a month for $14.95 subscription. Most popular audiobooks costs more than $20 each, and even though I love books I don’t think I would have spend roughly $100 on books each month. I believe this is also the reason some people may prefer podcasts or audio-books. After all, podcasts are free and for books you have to pay. This is where I discovered that the public library system in US (and I presume in many other developed countries) is AWESOME! Most libraries allow you to use apps such as Libby or Hoopla to checkout books online. Hoopla lets you borrow 5 books each month and Libby allows you to hold up to 8 books at a time, with a checkout window of 21 days. Most of the books I read in 2019 were thanks to the Northern California Digital Library. If your public library provides you this provision, you should definitely be leveraging it.
Have your next book lined up — This is also where the book club helped, but there are a number of other places where you can find great book recommendations. Having a next book lined up will help keep the habit going.

What next

As 2019 is coming to a wrap, I’ve been thinking will I try to do another 52 books next year? The answer is most likely not. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t start 2019 with a goal to read a specific number of books.

In fact once I had set the goal around June/July, I felt a bit of a pressure to finish it and I felt the joy of reading waning a bit. I felt the urge to pick the books that were shorter, in order to get my count up. So for 2020, I’m not going for any specific count. I think I already have the habit/system in place. If I don’t listen to a book for a week or so, I feel something missing. I’ll go with the flow, and see what number I’ll end up with.

Something, I’ll like to change in 2020 is that I’d like to add a note-taking practice. As I am mostly listening to the books while driving or completing another chore, I’m don’t get to take notes or underline important points in the book. I feel this is something I can improve and it is something that’ll help me retain more. If you have any ideas on how I can improve this, please add a comment.

Book Recommendations –

If you are feeling inspired and need help deciding which book to pick up. Here are Top 5 books that I feel made the most impact on my life in 2019

Atomic Habits — Science of habit formation distilled into one book. Loaded with practical advice to introduce a new habit in your life.
Dot Journaling — A practical guide — This book helped me build a BulletJournal practice that was my go-to way for managing my projects, to-dos this year.
Why We Sleep — I used to be proud of being able to survive with less than 6 hours of sleep. This book changed my perception of that and now I strive to find more time for sleep in my schedule.
Don’t lose out, work out — I never lifted weights in my life, until 2019, and this book pushed me to do that.
When breath becomes air — Autobiography of Paul Kalinathi, a surgeon who lost his life to lung cancer. A heart-touching memoir that will leave you with tears in your eyes.

If you are interested in checking out the other books I read, you can see the complete list on my Notion page here.

Lastly, if you have some book recommendations, please leave those in comments.

Originally published at https://linkedin.com

Managing your life with Agile

I have been reading “Getting Things Done” by Dave Allen recently, and tried to adopt some of the principles in my everyday life. I started maintaining a list of all tasks in Notion, and have been following it for a few weeks. This morning as I was explaining how Agile works to a friend, it stuck me that GTD == Agile.

There’s a lot of overlap between the GTD principles and how we manage our work with Agile. Which essentially means that as effectively I use Agile at work to manage my product (SAP SuccessFactors Compensation), it can be used quite effectively to manage your life as well.

Here’s a recipe for how to implement this for you –

Write down everything you want to accomplish (product vision → life vision)
Create Epics for big projects that lead you there.
Break down epics into manageable tasks → stories
Have a big backlog of all tasks
Prioritize backlog and pull items into the Sprint (week long?)
Assign story points to each task
Over tea/coffe, have a daily scrum with your life partner
Measure your velocity, how many stories/tasks you are able to complete outside of your meetings and emails.
Measuring velocity will help you plan for next sprints better.
Have a Sprint review at the end of each week and see what can be done better.

So there you go, try this out and let me know what you think of it.

My tin-foil theories for GoT Season 8

Trying to keep it short, here are my two tin-foil theories for GoT Season 8.

Cersei would not get the Golden Company.. At end of Season 7, we see that Theon is heading out to save Yara.. He would be facing Euron and would end killing him.. and thus Euron and Yara gaining control of Golden Company.. They would said towards Winterfell or whichever location the fighting with the Night King’s army is going on and saving the day last minute.. So be ready for Lord of the Rings style rescue mission with Theon being Gandalf here.. How wonderful would it be if he ends up saving Bran.. So instead of killing Bran which started his downfall, he saves Bran which becomes his redemption.
Cersei would end up blowing up OR planning to blow up King’s Landing to avoid the Dany + Jon alliance from taking control of Kings Landing or letting these people fall back to Kings Landing if the fight reaches down to Kings Landing. This would trigger Jamie to kill her, thus fulfilling the Valanqar prophecy towards the end of season 8.
John is Azor Ahai (obvious) and Dany will end up being Nissa Nissa. So John would have to sacrifice Dany to get Lightbringer, the sword that would be used to end the fight with White walkers. If you don’t know abou the Azor Ahai theory and Nissa Nissa check out this awesome video by Alt+Shift+X https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3o2LqFZcGU

Let’s see by end of season 8, which of these theories come true, if at all.

Gaining control of Time

Recently saw this TED Talk on Time Mangement from Laura Vanderkam –

So here’s my To-Do/Takeaway from the talk –

– Write the performance review for next year now — this means that imagine it is the end of 2017 and it was an Awesome year, what 3 to 5 things that I did this year to make this so great..

– Every Friday afternoon — make yourself a 3 category priority list — career, relationship and self.. and lookout for the whole next of the week and see where you can plan those for the next week.

Facing Your Fears

What is the biggest fear of a balding person. But of course, losing those hair. If you know my family then you can be assured that I will lose all my hair (mostly) at some point in future. It is easy to predict as I have hereditary hair loss from both sides of my family :).

The hair fall woes started when I was 17 or 18, I think. I remember seeing dermatologists since then and started taking medicines to prevent hairfall. The biggest worry since age 17 has been to not lose all my hair at such an early age.

Now I am hitting 30+ and the fear is still there, probably more enhanced. Or I should say the fear WAS still there — till the last week; when I did the unthinkable. I woke on Saturday morning and saw a bunch of hair on my pillow, who had taken their last breath that night. It actually sort of hurt to wake up every morning to this. That’s when I decided I don’t want to wake up to this everyday, this is now how I want my mornings to begin. I went to the salon and got a head shave.

Here’s a before and after..

Not too bad right?

Here are a few comments I heard about the new look –

Dad — you are looking like Satya Nadella.

Mom — Looking cool Swami Riteshwaranand

Friend (Jaini) — Oh bhainzzz.. poori safaai

Friend (Rajpal)- I will say looking good..

Friend (Roorkee) — What can I say.. reminds me of Neo..

Friend (Chawla) — Teri tind tere chehre se jyaada gori hai 🙂

Overall, I think not bad at all.. After the whole thing, I was asking myself. Is this what I was fearing so much? Spending so much time, energy and money on?

Like all things, I would like to take away a bigger lesson here from what now seems like a small thing. Go out, face your fears, the outcome may not be as bad as you think..

And for now, the look is here to stay.. Adios

Hey Airtel… I have a solution for you! #NetNeutrality #AirtelZero

This blog post is a result of wonderful discussion on #NetNeutrality that I had with my fellow ISB Co2014 peers on whatsapp.

The Argument

Raj made some fair points against #NetNeutrality (which I previously thought wasn’t possible). The essential premise was that the current data charges are so high that 60 crore Indians are not able to access it. Now if Flipkart or Whatsapp wants to pay for their data usage to reach out to these customers, why are we (more privileged masses) crying foul. We are getting a free lunch along with them and should not create much noise about it. Also, telecom industry has spent a lot on the auctions and now needs to find some innovative ways to make back that money. The question was that does Net Neutrality apply the same way to India as it does to US?

The Response

The Net Neutrality team had their share of reasons which I guess anyone reading this blog would already be well aware of. The regular ones like – It’ll stifle innovation, Giving too much power to Airtel to decide my choices (what would Deepika Padukone do with #MaChoice then?) etc etc.

The debate went long and neither sides giving up. Kudos to Raj for fighting for so long for what seemed like a lost cause at the beginning. But we came up with quite a novel solution actually and Airtel – I believe you might be interested in this.

The Solution

If the premise is to charge the businesses for the data costs, then rather than making a closed group like AirtelZero, you should make an open platform where all businesses can choose if they want to subsidize the consumers for accessing their website/app. Provide APIs to the businesses to track usage based on how many people are using it and charge the business accordingly, the same way you charge the consumer today. I think the revenue potential in this can be much higher than limiting the AirtelZero group.

I think everyone’s a winner in this. Airtel is not a gate-keeper on who can reach me and who cannot. Consumer saves money on the data charges. and Businesses can reach out to much larger audience, if they want to. Airtel makes a little more money, same data charges as today, plus may be a nominal 5-10k initial sign up cost for businesses. This is similar to adding cloud components to Telecom. Instead of paying Amazon for storage, I am paying Airtel to use it as a channel – Telecom as a Channel (TaaC model). I believe we have coined a new term here :D, at least in a way that we are defining it. Major accomplishment for a whatsapp chat, ain’t it :).

Everyone’s a winner

I believe #NetNeutrality holds the same virtues for India as it does for US, may be more as well. And there is still room for some innovative models for business and telecom to reach out to the lower income groups without stifling everyone’s freedom of choice.

Google Analytics vs Mouseflow

Actually it is not a vs question at all, because you are not comparing apples to apples. But they both essentially solve the same problem for you, i.e. trying to make sense of how users interact with your site.

In case you don’t know what Mouseflow is, it is a mouse tracking software and it can record user session and all activity around mouse clicks, keyboard strokes etc. Another similar software is Inspectlet, you can check out both. I am assuming that you already know what Google Analytics is.

The idea behind this post is to help the new business owners understand that Google Analytics might not be always the default analytics solution for your site. In fact, if you are just starting with your website and getting 10s of hits per day rather than 100s or 1000s, I would suggest that you focus more on Mouseflow rather than Google Analytics. Simply, because observing user behavior, even though indirect via recordings provides immensely more value than simply looking at the Aggregate of the data that Google Analytics would provide. It has helped us a lot in understanding user behavior on Shruti’s new venture www.ohappysunshine.com

Couple of really interesting findings from the mouse tracking

Size chart — We saw that a lot of users would search for “Size chart”, even though it was on the product page. It turned out that size chart was the last word in a long product description section and no-one was really reading that.
Blog to Product page — We saw that a lot of traffic was coming onto blog from facebook, but the users would not follow through to the product page. We observed that the users scrolled through the blog archive and tags section in right-nav and didn’t check the top nav. So we simply added, Product Collection link in the Right nav. And just like that, we could see a lot more conversions from blog to the product pages.

There’s a ton of more insights we got from mouse tracking, that have helped us improve the user experience. I listed those two give you an idea of what to expect.

More than that, just viewing each user session in isolation gives a much more in-depth understanding of how things flow rather than the consolidated picture.

Have you guys used Mouse Tracking on your website, how has been your experience?

Why should I Invest?

Since investing is always a boring topic. Before moving forward, let me get you excited about it.

Let’s look at these three scenarios where you are investing Rs. 10k every month for next 30 years.

1. Saving in a Piggy bank — you would have Rs. 36,00,000 (36 lakhs)

2. Investing in a Bank FD 9% interest — you would get a tax-adjusted return of 6.3% and would have Rs. 1,00,03,233 (1 crore)

(considering you fall in 30% tax bracket — (9% — .3 * 9% = 6.3%)

3. Investing in a Sensex at expected 12% interest (tax-free over 1 year) — you would have Rs 2,89,59,922 (~ 3 crore)

Remember you are saving just Rs. 10k per month.

And if you increase your investment by 10% every year with your corresponding salary increase (so 10k in Year1, 11k in Year2, so on..) you would have Rs. 7,50,63,119 (~7.5 crore)

So if now I have your interest, wait for the next blog on Easy Investing via Mutual Funds.

Want to try out more permutations and combinations of how much wealth you can create, use this SIP calculator — http://www.jagoinvestor.com/calculators/html/Increasing-SIP-Calculator.html

Note: I chose 12% ROI for Sensex as over any 10 year period since Sensex launch, 13% has been the minimum return over a 10 year period. Otherwise, the returns vary on annual basis from -49% to +75%. But if you stay invested over 10 year period, returns have always been positive. Read More over here at — Sensex Rolling Returns

iPhone 6 and the record pre-orders

When Apple launched its iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus, it would be an understatement to say that I was unimpressed.

Similar hardware has been around the market for more than couple of years. Comparisons with Nexus 4. Even though these comparisons may be outrageous. But one has to agree iPhone 6 is just a — minor, wee-bit, here and there — better than the previous generations and there are comparable if not better handsets out there which are available at lesser prices. Smartphones have for long been in the sustainable innovation phase and I don’t expect any new out-of-the-box innovation and that is not a game which Apple is really good at. Other players doing it for cheap can do similar (if not same) stuff at lower prices.

So when I saw the news of record pre-orders on iPhone 6, it didn’t make any sense to me. Why would 4 million people want to buy and over-priced phone? And then it struck me that they are not.. The difference was that I was comparing the purchase process to India where we pay for the phone once and iPhone would cost somewhere around Rs. 65k, but in US majority of the people buy their new phone as a part of the contract. So the new iPhone is not $649 spend every two years, but a $199 spend over two years.

For this reason, Apple will continue doing well in NA despite coming up with incremental changes YoY. By the time my contract is over, the phone is good enough than my current phone to shell out $199. The Marketing buzz and the #fanboy tech blogs will take care of the rest.

I think this has to be one of the best use of value chain to retain customers and profits. If Apple had been selling the phones at retail non-contract prices and the comparison users had to make between $649 iPhone6 or $299 Moto X, then Apple probably wouldn’t be enjoying record sales every time they announced a new phone.

How to beat Bangalore traffic?

Bangalore traffic can be killing.. You never know if it’s going to take you 15 mins or 1.5 hours. And it’s such a huge waste of productive time. Moreover, I got sick of all the Real Estate ads on the radio.

But recently driving has sort of become the 2nd best part of my day. Playing with Gungun being the best, of course. All thanks to the audiobooks. I used to listen to podcasts earlier, and recently started listening to audiobooks. Podcasts were also fun especially Stanford ETL, Freaknonimics, Tim Ferriss Show and others.

Now I have switched to Audiobooks. I had an Audible membership earlier and had downloaded couple of books including Lean Startup, Innovator’s Solution, Alchemist and more. Currently I have Delivering Happiness – by Tony Hsieh play and am almost close to finishing it. Thanks to Audiobooks I have finished more books in last 3 months than I have ever read in my life.

I also found out that Books 24×7, which is probably one of the most under-utilized company resources has tons of Audiobooks available. I had access to Books 24×7 for 7 years at IBM but never ever used it once. But now I am using it regularly. I finished Seth Godin’s Tribes and Purple Cow already and now onto Ziglar on Selling.

If you dread traffic as well, try using Audiobooks or Podcasts. I am you would wait to begin your commute everyday..