HARSH BATRA

Have you ever looked at life as a system? Have you ever considered all the important factors which influence your life and how they relate to each other?

I am a big believer of systems. I have created systems to run the company I work for. It makes much more sense to use pre-established rules than to rely on emotions such as motivation alone. But the use of these rules should not be an excuse to not-think. We must always remember what we are trying to accomplish. When I was thinking of life as a system I tried to break it down into as simplistic a perspective as possible. If you think hard enough you’ll realize that for the majority of us our goal in life is to be happy. Happiness might mean different things to different people but the ultimate goal for most is happiness, however they might define it. When I dug a little deeper on the key factors that influence happiness in life, this is what I came up with:

1. Health - Without Health we can’t do anything effectively. If we are unhealthy, most of our physical and mental energy goes into making ourselves feel better, leaving us little to no energy to do anything useful with our time.

2. Relationships - Happiness shared is happiness multiplied. If you don’t have family, friends, colleagues or acquaintances to share your joys and sorrows with then you are likely to live a very lonely life. In fact research shows that those who socialize live longer.

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Launch a business in 54 hours by meeting a group of people with different skills - developers, designers, business dudes. That sounded like a good way for me to get out of my daily routine and see what others are doing in the city. So I attended the Startup Weekend Gurgaon which happened from the 11-13 of November 2011 (gurgaon.startupweekend.org).

Everyone who had an idea pitched. They did it in front of those attending and then the people attending voted on the top 15. Once the top 15 ideas were picked, teams were formed to build a prototype over the weekend. I pitched the idea of creating an app for cricketers. What problem would it solve? It would make tracking performances amongst all players and teams easy and fun. How would it make money? This is where I was not very clear! So despite getting the third highest votes (13; the first team got 22 and the second team got 15) I was unable to get interest from any developer or designer.

An idea without a clear path to profit is not a business, its a hobby.

And I was certainly trying to work on my hobby instead of creating a business. So I let go of my idea to support a team of developers who were very excited about what they wanted to create but did not have the votes to do so. This all happened on Friday night.

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I recently heard one of the senior members of the cricket team we were playing against say -

"you know our problem is that we have 5 captains and 5 vice captains."

On hearing that remark everybody in our team cracked up laughing. Unfortunately, more often than not, that is the reality in a number of teams. There is this constant tussle amongst different players on who should lead. Should it be the person who put together the team? Should it be the senior most member of the team? Should it be the best player in the team?

In cricket, decisions need to be made involving batting, bowling and fielding; they need to be made at every point of the game. What I notice in cricket matches now is that the actual decision of the chosen leader actually depends on popular opinion. In some cases the leader is actually garnering team support for his decisions. Both these cases are bad signs!

It is very hard to effectively play as a unit if there isn't a leader to follow or if the leader cannot get the other members of the team to follow him. Respecting the leader and his decisions irrespective of the outcome is KEY to getting a team to play as a team. If you are playing a team sport, you should ask yourself two questions:

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Cricket and Sachin Tendulkar have become synonyms. Its hard to think of the sport without thinking of the man who is loved because of his ability in the sport. So when he gets on TV and gives batting tips you better listen because these words are priceless; they can really help you improve your game. I have tried to transcribe his words as clearly as I could.

Try and keep the ball along the ground

"Nowdays [cricketers] including my son Arjun like to play T20 and they like to see the ball going out of the stadium. I keep telling them that you know if you try to keep the ball along the ground and you mistime a shot you still continue batting. But if you keep the ball in the air all the time, you'll mistime one. Then you will be back in the dressing room, watching the rest of the match. Try and keep the ball along the ground."

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As a batsman there are many things which go through your head. You are out in the middle with 11 players from the opposition trying to get you out. What should your strategy be? Should you attack the ball? Should you first play yourself in before you start hitting your shots? Is there a target you have in mind? Do you have a personal target? Should you make use of the powerplays? is your aim to play through till the end?... and on and on and on. If you want to be successful in this sport, you better use your head wisely, or else you will have a few flurries of performances but nothing substantial to show in the long run.

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Is strength a skill? I wanted to test this assumption when I attempted to hit my target of 170-kg (375-lbs) in Dead-Lift over a total gym time of only 6 hours! Yes, you read correct - 6 hours! Unfortunately the best I could reach was 150-kg (331-lbs). I failed when attempting my last planned lift of 155-kg (342-lbs) [see chart below].
 
Why did I choose to focus on deadlifts? Because as Pavel Tsatsouline pointed out, the dead-lift is “a pure “mind lift” that allows one to get very strong without adding much weight.” In other words I did not have to eat like a pig, day in and day out to ensure that I put on enough muscle to be able to reach my target weight. Based on prior experiments, I can say that disciplined eating is the hardest part of any workout program. Without the need to focus on putting on muscle, I could focus on lifting with proper form!
 
What actually motivated me to try this DeadLift Experiment? Watching a 60-kg girl deadlift 155-kg (342-lbs). She looks like the girl next door and is lifting 2.5x her bodyweight. Isn't that crazy? When I watched this video (below) I was like "WTF...if she can do it, so can I."
 

Where did I find the idea for such an experiment? The following post on Tim Ferriss’s blog (click here) is what inspired me to do this over a period of 12 weeks. But didn’t I say 6 hours? Yup, the actual lifting time of the program was only 6 hours.

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I came back home upset; upset for being taunted by the opposition for losing the cricket match and upset for being the cause of the loss. I got down to psycho-analysing myself. Writing has a knack of clarifying the mumbo-jumbo in your brain. Once I sifted through the confused mess of interacting and conflicting thoughts, I actually got to the core of what I did wrong and how I can avoid doing the same mistakes again. Yes this is personal and very situation specific, but in the process I found clarity. And what better way to find clarity than to ask yourself questions. Maybe a similar process applied to a different situation will help you sift through your thinking or maybe you can find some insight as well as agree or disagree with my conclusions. Either way, I thought the ideas and conclusions were worth sharing, so here it goes.

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It is inspiring listening to Steve Jobs. If you feel lost at work, life, relationships,whatever… just listen to him for 15 minutes. His advice through the 3 stories he shares are priceless!

1. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma.. whatever, because believing the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path and that will make all the difference.”

2. “Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick; don’t lose faith. I am convinced that the only thing that kept me going is that I loved what I did. You got to find what you love. That is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truely satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do! If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking and don’t settle! As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. As with any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking, don’t settle!”

3. “For the past 33 years I’ve looked myself in the mirror and asked myself ‘if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been NO for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that Ill be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.

Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose.

No one wants to die, yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is as it should be because death is the single best invention of life. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone elses life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other peoples thinking. Don’t let the noise of others opinion drown out your inner voice, and most importantly have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

4. Stay hungry, stay foolish!

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