Thought Shots

Let me start by telling you something about an American President who is slightly less known than the others who have occupied the same position: President Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge had many beliefs. One of them was that whenever he spoke, he got in trouble. He said, "I realized that no difficulty comes if one does not speak". Once having been surrounded by the media, he gave only one response to whatever he was asked, "No comments". After getting out of the crowd and chaos, he turned around the journalists and said, "Whatever I said is between you and me and please don't disseminate the same outside." This he said even though he had not really said anything. At a ballroom party once, he was challenged by a lady that she would make him speak at least three words during the party and Coolidge answered, "You lose". Osho says, "People mostly say what they never intended to. Which is very strange, of course, saying things that you neve

This post is about that eternal war that has been raged in the mind of every man and woman. Simply put, it's the war between the irrational and the rational, the mind versus the heart, the reasonable versus the unreasonable. A couple of thoughts flashed across my mind while I thought about this piece. I recalled Einstein who said, "Never let your mind interfere in the matters of your heart." Or that scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where the young Charlie tells a cynical boy, "Candies don't have to make sense. That's why they are candy." George Bernard Shaw who said, " The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." A pretty close thought on the same line is from the movie 'The Departed' where Frank Costello tells his take on life, "I don't want to be a product of environment. I want my

I came across an article on Forbes the other day about how successful people spend (or should be spending) their weekends by Jacquelyn Smith. The article cited the example of Spencer Rascoff who only at the age of 37 has  co-founded Hotwire.com and served as a VP for  Expedia ; he held the roles of CFO, vice president of marketing and COO at  Zillow ; and in 2008, Rascoff was promoted to chief executive of the popular real estate information site. The secret behind Rascoff's ability to achieve so much and so quickly is explained thus by him, “My weekends are an important time to unplug from the day-to-day and get a chance to think more deeply about my company and my industry,” Rascoff says. “Even when I’m technically not working, I’m always processing in the background and thinking about the company. Weekends are a great chance to reflect and be more introspective about bigger issues.”  In this tough and competitive world, it has become crucial to make the most of every minute

Imran Khan put it best when he said that Tendulkar was too proud a cricketer to hang around if he was not meeting the high standards he had set himself over these last two decades. Tendulkar has been the closest thing to perfection in the country since he began playing for the Indian team in 1989. I was going through the thoughts expressed by his teammates and cricketing legends from around the world on his retirement. When a person leaves a field that he has for so long dominated, you expect a volley of praise from different quarters but only in this case whatever words of admiration were used seemed unable to describe the colossus of a cricket phenomenon that Sachin is. Dhoni writes that he was always in awe of the man and at times couldn't make eye contact with him. In the initial days, it was Sachin who was nice enough to break the ice in the slip and initiate a conversation with him. He remembers, " As luck would have it, I benefitted from Tendulkar's presence a

To begin with, let me describe a scene from the film, A Beautiful Mind . John Nash, a Harvard maths scholar and a later to-be Nobel Laureate, is begging his dean for giving him more time to work on his idea of Governing Dynamics. His dean reminds him that his fellows at Harvard have attended classes and actually managed to get their work published. He tells John that his efforts at his so-called original idea may be clever but they are hardly good enough. John pleads, "Please consider another review. Professor. I have repeated asked you for that, sir. My revisions are almost done." The dean stops him short as they enter the University cafeteria and shows him an elderly man accepting pens as tokens of appreciation from the men around at his table. The dean asks, "Do you see what they are doing in there?" John looks on. The dean continues, "It's the pens. Deserved for the member of a department who makes the achievement of a lifetime. And what do you see, J