Yelaa?

I started planning for my impending trip to India. Since it is a trip after three years, one of the objectives is to stay in India as long as possible. I successfully planned to convert my vacation time of X days into X+Y days, Y being weekends. I will be off to enjoy my long vacation in few days.  So I thought. I found a blunder in my plan.  I failed to include a long weekend in the plan which could have made the trip even longer and better. Funny

I am not happy with myself. After being mad at myself, I started blamestorming to find reasons, excuses and scapegoats. I was so confident that it was not my fault. I searched really hard to find the reasons behind this blunder and could not find any. Finally, I turned attention to myself to understand what went wrong in the planning part. The findings may seem to have a weak connection to the outcome but they are true. Here is what I found.

The root causes of the mistake are Infomania and multitasking. In plain English, those two words mean “not paying attention to the task at hand”.

I have been trying to focus on too much information at once. Ultimately this led to a mental mistake. Infomaina is a term coined by Elizabeth M Ferrarini, author of “Confessions of an Infomaniac”. Infomania is the debilitating state of information overload. Studies by Dr. Glenn Wilson found that people who are distracted by email and phone calls experience a 10 point fall in the IQ. This drop is more than twice from the impact of smoking marijuana and sleep loss even though the effect of marijuana is longer lasting than the information overload.

I have misunderstood my switch-tasking ability to multi-tasking. A few days ago I was sending an email to start an important professional conversation. Being a self confessed multi-tasker, I was talking on the phone while sending the email. I did a fairly good job in framing the email. While hitting the “send” button, I saw a mistake in the email. I started the email with “Hell Mr. John”. It was too late. Switch-tasking reduces the efficiency by 40%.  Research by Professor Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at MIT indicates that a human brain can focus on one or two items at any point in time. So unless you are an expert juggler, you cannot multi-task.

While my mistake didn’t affect anybody negatively, it still worth noting the findings from above mentioned research are real. These research findings have even more significance in today’s world of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and 24/7 texting.

Claudia Wallis wrote great post in Time about multi-tasking generation explaining what kids are losing by being “connected” all the time. Few weeks ago a trader misspelled “million” with “b” which almost sent the world economy into another recession. Probably, he was multi tasking.  Millions of people multitasking and not focusing on the task at hand could have been an indirect reason why we had a recent recession. If you are texting while driving, you are 23 times more likely to get into an accident, a recent study shows. See what could happen if you text while driving in this popular YouTube video. Be advised that the video has some gory details.

I plan to work on my habits. How about you?

What can we learn from this?

Indian Premier League is a franchise based cricket league in India. IPL, started in 2008 with a lot of fanfare, had hope for young cricketers, promise for businessmen and entertainment for fans. This league was modelled after English premier league and NBA. After 2 successful seasons, IPL ran into quite bit of controversy. Gone are the days when IPL was money printing, prime time entertainer. The league office has an ostrich-sized egg in its face. Speculations are rampant about bribery and illegal betting.

There are important lessons to be learned from IPL’s stumble. An organization’s growth should be organic. This should come with systematic planning and precise execution. Relentless pursuit of improvement and business development can bring success to an organization. Conversely, lack of attention to organization’s internal processes can have grave consequences.

IPL was built to take advantage of the religious following for cricket India. India played their first cricket match in 1932, but the game had to wait about 50 years to gain popularity. The game has been developed from the grass roots and turned into national passion. When India plays Pakistan in cricket, the entire nation stops and watches the intense drama. While IPL is a cricket league, the game is hard to be found. Opening ceremonies, Bollywood star sightings, IPL nights, and after parties took center stage while cricket became a side show. The high flying (ex-) commissioner along with his cohort generated unreal (really) evaluations for the league franchises through pure speculations and media propaganda. Currently IPL is valued at four billion dollars but no franchise is making money yet, even after three years.

IPL’s current woes are a reminder that developing a product and innovation it takes time. In order to expand variety, volume, and complexity and still maintain an edge in quality, you have to consistently develop and reinforce the processes and management skills of people throughout the organization. Systematic and quality processes are key to an organization’s well-being and sustainability. Last time I checked, cricket is still a popular game in India. It is the processes around that are falling apart and putting the people who are involved to shame. IPL commissioner, Mr. Modi tweeted his way out of the office. Nowadays he spends time tweeting IPL trivia. I guess it is time well spent. The longer he stays away from cricket the better it is for the game and the fans.

Board of control for cricket in India (BCCI) should start focusing more on the game than after parties and other circus activities. Renew the focus on running IPL with better processes and responsible people who work more than tweet. Improve the infrastructure to provide better development opportunities for cricket in India. Cricket is the primary and only product provided by IPL. League’s main focus is to maintain the integrity of this great game.

Fans owe it to themselves to ensure that they are not encouraging the narcissistic behavior of IPL management. It is the fan who controls what happens with the league. If the fans stop showing up to see the circus created by IPL until they get their act together and provide a better product, the game of cricket will live to see better days.

Many ancient scientists such as Pythagorus and Archimedes were interested in many subjects. Their curiosity gave us the concepts we study today. Leonardo Davinci was not a scientist; he was a curious human being. He didn’t try to find things. He tried to pursue his passion for learning. While doing that he came across some findings which we call them the greatest inventions. He was good at painting, sculpting, architecture, music, science, mathematics, engineering, anatomy, geology, and botany. He was known as a Polymath, a person whose knowledge and expertise spans a significant number of subject areas.

In today’s society, we are taught to focus on one subject throughout college and a career that follows. Even though we are not restricted to do that,  most of us end up with knowledge or expertise in one area and continue to work in that area for the rest of our lives. I think this kills innovation. In most cases innovation comes from need and exposure to a lot of concepts not limited to any one particular area. The latest invention Bloom Energy came out of the knowledge in concepts (but not limited to) such as Fuel cell technology and Material science.

Should we redefine our education system? Share your thoughts.