Digital

Every IT company is talking about focusing on "Digital" these days. I've seen lots of these 50-60 year old leaders in large IT companies saying in one breath that they'll focus on Digital, IoT, AI and Cloud. Even the younger ones talk all this shit but I won't accuse them of stupidity as they are closer to my own generation. Even the older guys are not stupid for sure - I must say - as I am an Indian, and I should respect old people and Gods. I figured that sometimes when they say Digital, they mean and include IoT and AI as well. May be something else also. I am not sure whether Cloud is also implicitly meant. Perhaps it is. Perhaps when they say 'Digital, IoT, AI and Cloud', they actually mean 'Digital - IoT, AI and Cloud'. The hyphen is lost in all Indian English accents.

The first thing that irritates me about Digital of today is that the word 'Digital' is used as a noun, while it is actually an adjective. Remember Digital Watch, Digital Washing Machine? But what the hell does it mean to say - XY% of our revenue will come from Digital; or - we are very upbeat about Digital; or - We will invest in Digital. Digital what?

Here's a definition of digital (adjective) from dictionary.com
...pertaining to, noting, or making use of computers and computerized technologies, including the Internet: 'We are living in an increasingly digital world.' 'Digital activism uses social media to achieve political reform.' 'His blog is a great example of digital journalism.' 'Digital technology has revolutionized the music industry.'

This brings me to the second thing that irritates me - what the hell is this stuff that is newly tagged Digital now? Doesn't everything done through interconnected (is that even necessary?) computers come under Digital technology? What the hell is new here?

Probably newer applications are emerging due to internet becoming more ubiquitous and accessible through means never imagined before, and that has opened a whole new world of applications and possibilities in doing things. That can be seen as an expansion of the whole Digital arena. Why this separate fuckin' term called digital - the way it's used - which doesn't even talk about all things digital and is not even grammatically correctly used?

Or may be it's just me... I need to do some googling to understand if I'm missing something but am feeling too lazy... you can use that to your advantage and call me stupid, I don't mind :)

Note: The image in this post is copied from the internet without noting the source.

Meaninglessness of all we do...

This astounds me. The meaninglessness of it all. So much of crap that we do all the time pretending it's all a big deal, yet none of it is of much consequence. In jobs it does earn us our salaries, so at an individual level official crap still has some monetary value. Even that is all a huge waste at organizational level; created coz someone higher up had to show he was doing something and simply didn't understand what's really to be done. Crap trigger is always top-down. And crap flow is both top-down and bottom-up. Is that personifiably true as well?

But money does not really assign meaning to what we do. For an individual, meaning has to be something beyond money. It's something that justifies the act by leading to an outcome that makes the world a better place in some manner, however small. And that outcome has to be visible enough to be really motivating. Otherwise, it's again no real meaning. It's like those hundreds of slides created every week by millions of managers worldwide to send to their bosses every Friday - stupid status reports - knowing most of them won't be read or understood. But they have to be made, coz someone more powerful wants them, and that's his way of making sure the progress of work is on track. It does meet the purpose for some bosses to some extent.

There is an interesting issue with us which makes the whole concept of meaning look upright and upside-down at the same time. We want meaning yet we want to get crazy and excited. Challenges motivate us, but challenging work is frustrating. We prepare the most rational strategies, yet we don't follow them, coz we are only good at making them. We like to sleep. We like to eat. We also want to be slim. We like privacy, yet we want a social life. We want mobile devices, yet we want work-life balance. We like to drive but we don't like traffic. When on bike we hate cars on the road, when on cars we hate bikes on the road. And everyone hates those walking in between. And walkers hate everyone in return. We like going to expensive places, yet we want them cheap with discounts. We go to malls and not buy anything. We buy things coz everyone does. We wear ties, which serve no purpose at all. We hit humans and love God. We take credit for good job but dump work on others. We take work that can give us recognition. We bully the weak and complain getting bullied by the stronger. We watch TV serials which show routine life, but find our own routine lives boring. We are obsessed about nudity, although we're all the same bodies. We don't like the smell of our own shit. We can kill plants and eat them, but killing certain animals becomes sin. We are okay with killing mice and mosquitoes, though. We enjoy alcohol and drugs that dumb down our minds, yet we take pride at our intelligence. We make strange drawings on our bodies and feel proud about it. White ones want tan. Black ones want to be white. The middle ones want to be white too, and then seem tanned. A woman saying she needs a man only for making babies is awesome. A man saying he needs a woman only for making babies is sick. Well there's a background to it - men have a long legacy of sickness of lot of kinds over ages. Let's pass that. We kill in the name of God, yet we don't have a clue who that is. The winners write histories to show them as good and losers as evil. Everybody dies, history remains. For whom? We can die any moment. Reality is that we will die some day, yet we live like we have forever. We are lazy, yet we want to achieve so much in life, be on top of the world. We push tasks on Friday to Monday as if it would never come. We want promotions in jobs, yet we don't want to be accountable for anything. We get inspired by what rich people say while they are at a place much different from where we are. We admire global Maxima more than local Maxima, yet we talk about setting milestones. We hate our bosses and what they do, yet we want to be promoted while it will only lead us to our bosses' position. We are masters of contradictions, yet we talk about consistency. We admire children, yet we aspire maturity. Do we become nuts when we are screwed?

Such fucked up minds we are, and yet we talk of meaning!

Singing in the Chorus

I love singing. It is an ability that is inborn and instinctive in me. Back in the 80's and 90's when I was a kid and lived in the Railway colony in Bilaspur, I had a secret life of my own where I would instantly pick up any Bollywood number that fell on my ears - the lyrics would be imprinted on my mind which would set it up for me with the tune. I'd sing it out - loudly, when nobody was listening to me, and in my mind, when I didn't want to be heard. I dreamt of going to Mumbai when I grew up and trying my luck in Bollywood. Udit Narayan was my guru, like Dronacharya was of Ekalavya. I learnt all my singing by listening to his songs. His voice mesmerized me, and I tried to copy him.

Fast-forward a few years and I was in IIT Bombay. I was selected - rather volunteered and didn't get rejected - to sing in the chorus for a bunch of songs in the Performance Art Festival (PAF), where hostels 8 (my hostel) and 10 (the UG girls hostel at that time) were together going to perform a play. It was called Asakt, and the team had chosen quite a few nice songs to be included at various points during the play - So gaye hain from the movie Zubeidaa, Hillele jagjor duniya by the band Indian Ocean, Dhuaan dhuaan from the movie Mission Kashmir, O nadiya jahaan teri rukh jaaye - don't know the source of this beautiful song. Except for the first song, the rest of them were to be sung by a male - KK, a 5th year senior was going to sing all of them. I, GP and a few girls from H10 were the chorus-team, and formed part of the overall music team. Being in the music team was a big advantage for a freshie, as now he didn't have to do the prod work, which included carrying long bamboo sticks around for making the sets and all the stuff for the backdrops, etc. - basically slogging all nights doing whatever the seniors asked him to do. But it was seen and, I guess, indeed was a good opportunity to network with the seniors, if you really cared for that.

The music team also had 2 guitarists - Kedar and Srinath, and a lady who played the Synthesizer and also sang the song So gaye hain. Sorry to have forgotten names of all ladies here. I remember the guys' names as they were from my hostel and I had further associations, not so strong, with them during my later years at IITB.

I envied KK as he was the lead singer for so many songs. He sang very well - was probably the best singer in the campus at that time - and was probably a trained singer. He played many instruments too. And in addition, it was his last year at IITB, and his last chance to sing his heart out and be heard at that scale. He truly deserved it. He was the music director for the show.

Being clubbed with a girls hostel, H8 guys had a unique opportunity that year - to work with the girls, and it was supposed to be fun. The girls didn't do much of prod work which involved lifting weights and setting them up. So that part of the job had to be mostly taken up by the guys - who must have cursed the lottery or whatever that led to us getting paired with the girls hostel. But from the perspective of winning in the competition, partnering with girls gave a competitive edge for sure as their contribution in cast, acting, script and music is unmatched otherwise by guys. And when girls are around and watching, guys perform better too.

I was an extremely shy and introverted kind those days, and had a tough time acting cool or talking to guys who seemed cool or whose first language was English. The music team seemed like full of such guys and girls. I didn't have much of a concept of conversation, communication, sense of humor and flirting in English, which for me was purely a language for official purposes, exams, lectures, letters and emails. I am a shade better now, having seen and dealt with more of the world over the years, but I can still be seen replying in Hindi when someone who I know speaks Hindi well but still asks me something in English. And in addition, I don't like mixing languages when talking... so that confuses my blabber even more.

This music team had daily practice sessions for many hours starting after dinner and till late in the night. The venue was a small room at the back of the B-wing of H8 designated as music room. While the lead singers and the guitarists had a lot on their plate having to practice all the songs and the music, the chorus-team was relatively idle. Me and GP used to go on time each day.

GP used to be highly enthusiastic about this. He would look excited, engage well with the seniors and explicitly wish for the success of the show - and looked, and am sure was, quite genuine. I, on the other hand, was always disinterested, bored, indifferent, silent, introverted, disengaged and lost. And I am hardly ever able to successfully express my strong wish of anything becoming successful, coz deep down I am often okay even if things screw up. This would be good for a saint, but for normal humans, wanting something strongly helps one achieve it. And expressing it well helps build the team spirit.

When the chorus-team's turn came to sing during the practice sessions, I'd sing along with GP and a couple of girls... some humming, some lines. I used to pour all the Udit Narayan I had in me into those few lines. But that's not how you sing in the chorus. You have to sing such that your voice blends softly with those of others and you hear one breezy sound. But I found singing in the chorus very boring and unmotivating. It felt like being in a herd where you have no individual identity or scope for recognition. More importantly there's no scope for putting forth your best performance and enjoying that moment. Any attempt at leaving a distinguishing mark for yourself is considered a mistake. And with that, you are expected to still draw some satisfaction in hope that some day you'll have your chance to sing in front.

The hope wasn't without a basis for me, as KK would pass out and a few years later, I was going to be in my final year, and if I was good enough, competitive enough and assertive enough of my seniority, I'd be allowed the lead position too. But I didn't find such a slow progression exciting, and didn't even participate in such events after my 1st year. I know that was stupid, but I did what I felt like. I did an even more conventionally stupid thing - I dropped out of the Surbahaar team (which did an orchestra every year), after getting selected in their auditions when I was in my 1st year at IITB and performing in that year. I did get 1 solo song to sing - Mai nikla gaddi leke from the movie Gadar - an Udit Narayan number - all for myself - along with 2 girls and 2 guys who sang the chorus... KK got 9 songs that year! But even the Surbahaar team did more than a month of practice and I couldn't enjoy all those long hours with that bunch of cool guys and gals for reasons mentioned above. And the thought of doing that every year didn't seem exciting to me. I signed out by not turning up the next year, and the team didn't seem bothered to ask me why. They might have noticed I was missing. Probably I didn't really matter the way I was. May be now I am more the kind of person who'd fit it. But if I stayed on somehow in the team that time, I could have benefited from the progression and got many more solo songs in the later years, and may be my personality would also have got upgraded for good. But I was stupid, lazy and careless - listened to my reluctant side.

Outside IIT, such progression is highly unlikely in the field of art. One doesn't generally see a guy singing in the chorus becoming a lead singer after some time. One doesn't also generally see dancers dancing behind hero or heroine in bollywood numbers becoming heros or heroines themselves. It rarely happens that someone starting his career as a comedian or a villain becomes a hero later on.

But in companies, most people do start their careers by being part of the 'chorus-teams'. However, unlike a musical piece, in offices one does have an incentive and encouragement to create a differentiation and recognition for himself/herself and work out a faster path to the top. And there is place for those who want to hide in the herd - out of choice or compulsion - and be lost without anyone knowing until someone notices a voice missing and to be filled in, or needing replacement.

In any case, chorus is still an important element of a melodious song, even if the singers in it don't get any credit and are left unknown. It's partially about the reference frame. The micro you go, you can identify leads within chorus, although not singing like it's a lead coz the singer also has a reference frame, and in that, he/she's part of a chorus. Go macro and leads may merge to form a chorus, albeit cacophonous coz their reference frame gives them a lead perspective. And of course, going micro and macro does not make much of sense if the listeners are also bound by their reference frame, like we are. So it's on the singer to break out of the choruses of life and be heard... by others and himself... the audience he/she chooses... and the song he/she sings!

SochVichaar 10+

SochVichaar turns 10

This blog became 10 years old last month. During these 10 years, I have written my views on a wide range of topics. Some of the views have evolved over these years, may be quite a bit in a few cases, even after I wrote on the topic. Perhaps if I end up becoming a great man, and then die, this blog will serve as a good tool for analyzing my views and how some of them evolved from 2006. To give a sense of the evolution, I must keep revisiting many of the topics I write about. And since I often don't remember what I wrote last time, and get too lazy to go back and check, I guess the views in an article I write can be good representation of my thought process at that time, without my mind holding itself back to maintain consistency with its past. But if my blog has to really show a true evolutionary picture of my thinking, I should blog more often and on all kinds of topics. So, like before, I'd resolve to write more and write more often. I've often thought about doing a-post-a-day, but then it never worked out, coz I could neither work with such discipline nor get the required support from my mind with a consistent flow of thoughts to create content from... laziness and lack of interest, in other words. Which brings this post to the thought that my mind is already struggling with:

When so much more can be done, why am I doing so little?

The growth mindset
Most, if not all, organizational models are based on a premise that every person wants to grow. And growth has more-or-less the same definition everywhere - growing up the organizational hierarchy: more accountability + more money + more authority. And it is probably assumed that every person wants this kind of growth, would get motivated by it and would see it as an incentive to do his/her job better. As I was writing the last line, another possibility struck me. Perhaps the very model of the current work-world is to pull up people who get motivated by growth as offered by the model. For people who define or understand growth differently, the model only offers them resources to survive, but no opportunities to grow. And it has a way of ruthlessly purging people who don't successfully strive or pretend to strive to grow within its framework. And if growth is really a basic need for even those people, they will be left frustrated and aimless... unless they are creative and fortunate enough to find the path that will lead them towards growth - the way they want it.

In both professional and personal endeavors, I am struggling to find my definition of growth - something that would motivate me to try harder, do more, aim for more, and achieve more... more of what? - that's part of the definition I am seeking, I guess.

May be most of the people are also just seeking, while still playing the game, pretending to be aiming for the victory as per the game's rule-book. Among the rest, a few who are the real players of the game have fun playing. And a few die of inaction. And as in everything, there are shades of gray.

The pleasure mindset
Are we just seeking pleasure in whatever we do? Life doesn't carry a fundamental meaning at an individual level, except for whatever we assign to it to make sense of our lives - just coz our minds are capable of questioning our very existence. And at a very basic level, we have things that make us feel good in various ways and degrees, and things that make us feel bad in various ways and degrees. And it seems we constantly seek what makes us feel good. Some of us are wired to feel good in ways different from others'. And with strength of numbers for all kinds of people in the highly populated world of today, we even have strong movements to establish rights of all kinds of individuals to seek pleasure in their way - as long as nobody else's pleasure is harmed to any significant degree.

One can argue that not all forms of pleasure lead to earning a livelihood. But it can be argued in return that in seeking to maximize pleasure, one actually goes for options that give highest pleasure, and those that can earn for a person would give him/her more pleasure than those that don't. Scientists, for example, do science for the pleasure it brings to them. Sportspersons derive pleasure from the sport. People stuck in boring frustrating jobs, yet not moving out, are only maximizing pleasure as they fear they'd be in a risky and less pleasurable situation if they go for the alternatives they can see. Sometimes there is temporary sacrifice of pleasure in trying to reach a state of higher pleasure later on. So, one is always seeking a local maxima of pleasure and has a global maxima also in mind.

Is growth just another mode of achieving pleasure? It seems so to me to some extent. And the difference in what various people consider as growth may actually be the difference in which act gives maximum pleasure to them, and in how would the degree of pleasure change with variations in the act; and transition to higher pleasure state would be considered growth. Of course growth can be fast or slow here. But having said that, I feel growth has other dimensions to it which are not ultimately pleasure-seeking. Growth is ingrained in us in that we all start small - physically - and grow big, and mature, and ultimately die. It's a way of nature. And to grow is perhaps a natural urge which one can't get rid of, even if it is frustrating or painful. But as thinking individuals, we still differ in what we consider as growth.

The laziness mindset
This applies when one is reasonably well off, such that the next few meals are not at risk. And with that context, a lot of humans carry out an input-output optimization - such that they get maximum returns from minimum investment. Although popular quotes say that something earned by working hard for it gives maximum happiness, in my experience, at an ongoing basis, one is happier when things come easily rather than when they come with a lot of labor - i.e., one always looks for maximum returns from minimum investment - if it can apply and make sense for money, it can very well apply to all forms of investments including time and effort. It is this guiding force that explains large numbers of free-riding lazy employees all over all organizations in this world, drawing salaries - ever demanding more - and doing as least as they can, playing politics, delegating or escaping work, and everything else that you and I very well know. If there are carrots, there are sticks as well, and to ensure the ass also carries you while it walks ahead, you have sit on top and keep showing the carrot, offering occasional bites, while the stick has to sometimes hit where it hurts, so that the ass keeps moving at an acceptable pace.

I think our actions and choices, including how much I blog, are driven by the above 3 mindsets - not all in the same degree of course, and there could be one/two dominant mindset(s) at times. Realizing this is important to make better choices in life and also to feel better about those choices. If nothing, we'd learn not to blame the situations and the world. It's us.

Startup India, Standup India

Startup India, Standup India - seems like India is now promoting both startups and standup comedy in a big way! What if it really did? Firstly, to make a joint pitch for the two - sort of bundling products - there has to be some logical connection. For one, startup founders would make good standup comedians in my view - they all talk a lot, they all take pride in thinking crazy, and most of them are extroverts. And if they are guaranteed good money, they'd definitely jump in. The second connection that might be looked at, is some crazy babu going by this line of thinking - if the government were to act like a VC, and had to entertain these startups for funding or whatever, then it has to be entertained in return. So these entrepreneurs have to perform some standup comedy. It may seem weird the first time you think about it, but it would soon start making sense. Anyone who has seen the program Shark Tank on TV - where entrepreneurs stand in front of investors and make their pitch - would know that the imagery is not very different, although the content and nature of discourse is. But as we can imagine, government officials don't think and act like conventional investors. They'd any day enjoy some standup comedy more than boring and unintelligible discussions on top-lines, bottom-lines, equity and shit like that. And once the comedy session is done, they can discuss some other lines over chai-samosa.

The vision of the government is amazingly supportive of entrepreneurship, and like never before. And, as one of my friends said soon after Modiji announced the incentives for startups, if we are not starting up even now, we probably never will. Although the incentives may not be practically of the kind and scale that would make it a cakewalk for millions of Indians, the positivity of outlook and supportive policies can make all the difference.

I am reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Have finished only 43.9% of it so far in 3 weeks - quite slow by any standards. I don't know how, I've lost my habit of reading. Just like I got it 2004 from nowhere. May be it'll come back. Anyway... The book is about the right approach for building startups - the lean way - avoiding wastage of time, money and other resources. It talks about quickly building MVPs (minimum viable products) out of ideas, testing them out on samples of the target audience, testing alternatives, comparing, trashing, improving, developing, launching, testing more, improving more, and going on like that iteratively. It says - don't just go on to develop the full product thinking you know the customers want it; rather develop pieces of it to try out the concept and get feedback... and do that continuously to reach higher levels of learning and product maturity. This makes a lot of sense in theory. But execution in this manner requires tremendous alignment of thought process with the theory. I have to know more to see if it works. May be I should test this approach and see where it takes me. But there's higher risk the approach would fail for me if I don't "believe" in it at the outset. It's like trying to reach god while being an agnostic deep down. The lack of belief in the goal or the path to it will always prevent you from applying 100% of yourself behind the goal. Anyhow, I have not taken thheka to prove Eric Ries right or wrong. If his method doesn't work for me, I'll figure out what works for me and proceed. More important is that I have to get my startup moving and scaling up.

First things first... I will start practicing standup comedy from today. Wish me luck...

See you soon!

Mountain

Norway wants to shift its border by 20 meters so as to gift a mountain to Finland, which has none while Norway has many taller ones! Read about it here. If only all countries could be this friendly, the world would have been very beautiful. But friendly gestures are done when countries are in friendly terms. And in most cases friendly terms is a phase, until there is some bad spark somewhere because of whatever reason - an illegal immigrant, a terrorist attack, a resource sharing conflict or a passionate sporting event. But such is the world and its ways. There will always be friends, non-friends and foes, different ones at different times.

But let's focus on another aspect of that gesture - gifting a mountain!!! I mean of all things... a mountain! Those guys must be really obsessed with risen masses of land - the Norwegians and the Finns - one to think it's a treasure they have and the other to miss them enough to consider it a gift. May be the latter actually meant - shuru kisne kiya - when it accepted the gift. If there's real joy in all this, it's cool indeed. But then, what's the fun if things are indeed as they are shown to be? Still... a mountain? Really? It's a strange obsession humans have - for all things sticking out - more the better. A similar obsession is with making tall buildings. There's this recent news that Saudi Arabia is building a 1 km long tower (read here) - 200 floors tall - I guess so tall that the highest floors would be in clouds whenever they visit Saudi Arabia. Would be fun to stand on the terrace and pee into the passing clouds that would go and cause rain in another country! Must be great living in the desert and doing hankypanky with clouds that are not yours anyhow.

In India we have some of the tallest peaks in the world. Our neighbors also have some. Some of our Gods live there... no kidding! I recently saw the movie Everest. It's one sad story of trekkers and their expedition to scale the tallest peak going terribly wrong. I once went with a few friends of mine to climb the tallest peak in the Sahyadris - Kalsubai. We didn't really know it's the tallest when we went there. It was a lazy Sunday morning during the rainy season, and we just wanted to go somewhere for fun. So, clearly, we didn't prepare much for something this big. I don't want to describe this whole trip... long-story-short - we gave up after climbing half way up - it got dark and scary, we ran out of food and we were tired. Well, I don't know if it was really even "half" the way up that we went, but what the hell! I even write in my CV in the extracurriculars section: Avid Trekker - scaled Kalsubai - the tallest peak in the Sahyadris! Well, I did visit the place... That's how CV's go. You do a few lines in Java and you are qualified to write Java under your skills. You get something self-published and call yourself a published author. You stand for some time in a hip-deep swimming pool and say you know swimming. It's fair.

Speaking of mountains, there's mountain of work piled up. Lemme take care of it. It's only like that one Finnish mountain, though - not very high. So can take it off soon. Bye for now.

May be...

Being from these elite institutes of the country puts a great pressure on you to do something that the world admires. Especially in times like now when lots of young guys and girls fresh out of college are starting interesting ventures. Many are failing of course, but we are told that's part of the game. As this new breed is sweeping the business world, people my age are wondering how to catch up. But most of us would soon behave like all older generations - claim respect just coz we have some gray hair! And gulp all ego.. and, while the heart gently weeps, work for these youngsters who are clearly not as smart as we are... come on, elders are allowed to think that way about those younger :)

I myself have had dreams, most of which I forced myself to see, of owning and running companies. And discussing such ideas, or thoughts about ideas which don't come, is one of the most favorite topics of gossip among most people in their 20's and 30's in urban India. The other hot topics being girls and sex for guys, and guys and relationships for girls! (Well, I am just guessing for the latter.) Right now I am part of 2 whatsapp groups where startups keeps coming up as a topic. One is of my friends from IIT and the other is of my friends from IIM, The IITians seem to have more interest in anything related to entrepreneurship - which I can safely generalize about all IITians, as can be seen even from the large number of founder CEOs who are IIT alumni. But not many who are IIM alumni (IIT+IIM not considered under IIM). A very basic reason for that is the culture in these institutes. In the 4 years at IIT, we hear the word Entrepreneur so much that many IITians get inclined to adopt that as the way to go about in life. In the 2 years at IIM, all we hear to that extent are "CV", "Resume", "CV Point", "CGPA", "Job", "Globe" etc. etc. And so all most MBAs want to do is make a good CV, get a high paying job and "globe" their way to the top! And therefore, drawing an inference here from the general observation, in my whatsapp group with friends from IIM, conversations on entrepreneurship lack any real masala.

Anyhow, this bug - entrepreneurship - just flies around without biting me. I am not sure if startup CEO life is what I want. Sometimes I feel these things have been stereotyped too much, to create an unnecessary psychological differentiation where none exists. May be things are not too different either way. May be the barriers to entry into that world which are mostly mental are created by its inhabitants to make themselves sound cool and their achievements too big for common people to aspire for, But then, I am obviously not qualified to say all this as I've never even stepped into that land and felt it for real. I take back what I said... will say it again after I experience it myself and if I ever do. I find this funny - taking back something said and recorded... but since it's considered a legitimate way of striking invalid communications, let's abuse it!!!

The thought of creating stuff that the world finds useful - makes their life easy or fun - is quite exciting. For lazy people, the excitement lies in the thought itself and in nothing beyond that! A true entrepreneur, I feel, should theoretically be a doer, and should love execution more than ideation. Is that true? For great thinkers, there are ways in which thinking itself can be something that can influence the way the world works and even earn money for them. Lazy people have ways to be doers in the world of today. I think I am somewhere in the mid-point in this matrix of traits - thinker, doer, lazy - perhaps a state many call the comfort zone. Probably need to stretch in some of the dimensions, and add an element of risk - may be, I can be an entrepreneur too!