From Now Until End of the Day

As I woke up this saturday morning and walked down,a burgeoning thought came to me - trite but true nevertheless - "This beautiful morning is the beginning of the rest of my life". As Vicktor Frankl says, as you tear of a leaf from the day-calendar you can either mourn the loss of yesterday or make a few notes of the leaf that forms the brick that has gone to build one more piece of your life edifice. I also remembered a conversation with Ravi about "Economics and GDP". Here is my Gedanken experiment - Imagine that there are only two folks in the world and each of them have a . If one guy grows a carrot and the other guy pays for that carrot with a dollar, then the system (of just these two people) as a whole has created a incremental value of $1 (because the carrot came from outside the system). But, if one guy sings a song and gets paid $1, has the system as a whole increased in value? My fundamental belief was that incremental value creation (GDP being a crude measure of this) has to come from outside the system (from the earth oil etc., for example). I always believed that everyone else in some manner supports the guy who digs the carrot out of the earth. After that conversation, I realized that incremental value creation comes from within the human being as he sings the song and not outside the system. So, as population explodes the GDP of countries naturally are supposed to increase because imagine how many songs can be sung and how many carrots can be grown. What is a crude measure of incremental value creation that an individual brings forth - apart from latent potential in a person, the crudest measure is the life span of individuals. Time, therefore, is a representation of GDP. But population alone is not answer. Countries that have better systems that facilitate bringing out potential from its population become wealthier nations.

Seeing Life through the Cs.

As I keep thinking about the paths to success in human endeavors, I
came across various characteristics that were (in hind sight) starting
with C.

Competence: Here is something that I used to think was the be all and
end all in dtermining success. It is very important and lately I
realize that relative competence is key. Your smartness is not needed
for a bunch of geniuses but for a bunch of folks who find it tough to
think beyond the first level.

Charisma: Here genes play a major part as well as a positive
attitude. Despite any politically correct platitudes, looks do matter
and is a key enhancer of success.

Connections: The network of friends and relatives in society is very,
very key. This perhaps becomes more and more important as time goes
by because in order to achieve important thing external help is needed

Composure: Calmness under pressure and ability to handle non-linear
events in life is the biggest determinant of being a successful
person.

While these four form the cornerstones of a professional life, the
following additional things are a little bit more personal life
centric.

Care: Ability to nurture relationships.

Character: Having a bedrock principles to deal with issues in life is
what makes character important.

--
Kalyan Madhavan