Akshay Shah

If you are taking a decision under pressure or If you are feeling stretched or If you are doing it compulsively or If thinking about not doing it makes you feel better then DON’T DO IT

I have two stories and some philosophy to share. Lets consider the first story of two kids, lets call them Mark and Adam. They go to the same school and they undertake the same classes. Mark and Adam are always competing with each other. Sometimes Mark gets a B- grade when Adam gets a C. Sometimes Adam manages to pull off B- when Mark gets C. But when you take a look at their results in terms of the bigger picture of the class, they are just about average.  What my parents had taught me very early on in life is that you should never compare yourself with anyone else. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. You should definitely learn from what others are doing. But you should focus on your strengths and how you can make the most of it. The only comparison you should worry about is of your older version to your current version and always strive for improvement. Am I better at doing ‘x’ now than I was five years ago? Lets take the above two stories and put it in business perspective. The product itself is the most important part of any company. When developing a product, the goal should be to avoid the use of the context ‘better’. The word better always implies comparison. Better than what? Depending upon the product you are comparing it against, your mileage may vary.  And in the rare case that your competitor runs out of business, your product loses the purpose of its existence and evolution because it can no longer have that baseline to be compared against. I think its more meaningful to switch the context to ‘best’. When you start using the context ‘best’, you implicitly set sky as the limit. Our purpose should be to focus on making the very best. To always aim higher. So whenever in doubt while making decisions, always ask yourself this question - “Would this make it the best in the market?” As Steve Jobs once famously said, “For Apple to win, Microsoft doesn’t have to lose”. For to win, doesn’t have to lose. So stop comparing and start aiming higher.

Introverts are traditionally people who are not comfortable talking in front of a group. Most of the introverts are shy because of the platform. They are not shy on every platform. Internet as a platform serves well for Introverts. Being one myself, here is how I was able to leverage this very beautiful platform called the Internet to share my ideas. Everybody likes to share their ideas. Ideas live only if shared or executed. If you tell your friend about it and if she likes it then you gain points from their approval. These points when accumulated build your confidence but for gaining these points you have to communicate. For communicating and connecting with people all you need to do is talk to them and share your ideas. Some people may be extremely comfortable doing this face-to-face but for others, there is always another option. Facebook is an excellent platform to share information with your friends. For your friends to know something about you, you need to talk about it. If you are passionate about something then you need to share it. Facebook as a medium allows you to share stuff with your friends. If any of your friend checks out your profile or your wall, they will get an idea about your interests. If the same thing is consistently present throughout then they would get a feeling that you know what you are talking about. The next time she needs some information about that particular topic, the first thing that would come to her mind would be “I saw this stuff on his wall. He seems to know about it. Let me ask him about it”. And from there on, its just a matter of really being passionate about what you already know. If you help her then she will inform her friends and similarly the trend follows. It’s like word of mouth publicity only online. Honesty is the key here, share what you believe in and do what you believe in. For example: I am an Apple fanboy and really interested in the company’s culture and philosophy, so I started sharing my thoughts and whatever I liked about Apple. I kept doing this consistently without the intention of influencing anyone. I did it for myself and after sometime people started noticing it. Twitter is great as a collaboration tool. I realized this when I used to follow the CS193P course by Alan Cannistraro and Evan Doll on Stanford (which by the way is the best way to start learning iPhone development). I was interested in learning iPhone application development and this seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. I would normally be hesitant to stand up in the class and ask questions in a class of 60 people but I was extremely comfortable asking questions on Twitter. We used the hash tag #CS193p to communicate and I talked with students across the globe from US to Netherlands. We also helped each other whenever we got stuck with the course assignments. One fine afternoon, I was reading news feeds online and I stumbled upon this interesting idea on Photojojo called “Project 365”. Project 365 is about taking a photo everyday and publishing it online so that you get better at this skill. I was interested in Photography and had just bought a new D-SLR, so I started posting pictures on Flickr. Everyday I would think think of new ideas and try to capture them in a photograph. Often, my friends would have interesting ideas of their own that they would share with me. If I missed to take a photo for a day, they would remind me about it. And these were not just my close friends, they were people on Flickr, who used to share their pictures in the Project 365 Flickr group. Since you post everything online and you are part of a bigger community, everyone will push you to do your best. I failed to continue doing it for a year but that’s a topic for a different post altogether. Frankly, I cannot imagine this little idea gaining momentum without the help of my friends both online and offline. As an introvert, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by innumerable opinions in a predominantly extrovert world but it’s important to always ship and to get your ideas out there. It’s important to see how everyone reacts to it. If you are passionate about something, just put it out there. Use the distribution power of the Internet. Slowly, this relationship will blossom and you will fall in love with the Internet all over again. P.S. : I wanted to share my experience and so it exists here as a blog post.