2011 start with few random thought

First of all, a very happy New Year to you one and all.

I cannot believe 2010 disappeared like that, It seems like it was just a few months back than I moved back from London to Lahore and now that I think about it, its almost coming to one year. One year of massive change, little sister got married, we finally made some major strides for my little venture, which seems to be progressing well towards end of January deadline.

I have been quite bad at posting about my reads, so to rectify that from onset, I am totally engrossed in two books that Im munching through at the moment. First one is the awesome 'Blink by Malcolm Gladwell', who I was introduced to from Outlier, a very awesome book indeed and Blink is just as good. Malcolm has a way of grabbing your attention by piling on the evidence of what various actions results might usually mean but then starts disecting each to give a breakdown of what ACTUALLY happened and how we humans are terrible at giving credit to our second mind (subconscious) and fail miserably when we go further and try to justify our decision and logic. Simply facinating stuff, especially considering this is something we all humans are continuously doing.

The second book is the audio book to 'Delivering Happiness' by Tony Hsieh. Tony appeared out of nowhere in the retail business world with the rise of his latest venture called 'Zappos', a US internet retail company. I love how Tony is so frank about all the mistakes (a poor choice of word and one I think he didnt himself use) he made but kept on believing in what he set out from the start. End result is that Tony's company 'Zappos' was acquired for $1.2 billion by Amazon. Definitely read the book or hear the audio book, which is read by the author himself, to hear what he had to go through to build a company thats defined what a company culture is and how it helps build a brand so powerful that your competitors want to be you. Amazing stuff.

As Ive entered 30s as well, its freaking me out that my time is running out. Life truly is short and the more stories I hear, mainly from my european friends about enjoying life to the max, the more puzzled I get. I have a purpose in life and while that purpose, as defined by me for myself, is to be successful financially and build a venture that owns its market, that surely is not the only purpose in life. I am leaning more and more towards that perhaps, it is to share whatever we have...

Success Literature

For a few months now, I have been eagerly sifting through ‘success’ literatures in search of that secret formula that all successful enterprises and more notably successful people use.

  One of the best & most inspiring sources was Stephen Covey’s classic ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’. The problem I noted to myself about this book back then was that its too open and too deep, meaning to say, its not something that I can read today and hope to enact tomorrow and be on my way to achieving success. ‘7 Habits’ is the kind of book that reminds us about the fundamental principles of life. To establish those principles, one needs a lifetime. And so my search continued…

I turned to Guy Kawasaki's ‘Art of the Start’, which was almost totally devoid of any ‘principles’ and thus soon forgotten. Michael E. Gerber’s ‘Awakening the Entrepreneur Within’ for all its recommendations was founds to be mildly inspiring at times but mostly self-adulation of a non-arguably successful man. Not great or recommendable.

Few more books aside, I stumbled upon Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outlier’ in a bookshop in Lahore and decided to hear his argument. And wow, what an argument the man presents.

In a nutshell, Malcolm presents that no one in this world makes it alone, success is a cumulative of hard work, opportunity outside on one’s controls and events & circumstances (which are again outside one’s control.

If anything, this book rejuvenated my faith in Allah. There is so much one can do and at the end of the day its Allah who has decided what each of us gets. Hard work will be my way of staking a claim for his mercy.

I really could not be happier with the book. Its a wonderfully written, richly explained and all round a wonderful read. I love this. I intend to re-read this book (along with 7 Habits & Don Tapscott’s absolutely revelatory Wikinomics).