“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Tao Te Ching

Tao has explained whole Kaizen principle in one line.

I have just finished reading book called “One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way” by Robert Maurer and thought to share few kaizen principle with you.

Kaizen has two simple definitions:

• Using very small steps to improve a habit, a process, or product
• Using very small moments to inspire new products and inventions

 By asking small questions and taking small steps towards your goals, you are programming your brain to do good things. Below are few quality questions you can ask to yourself to get familiar with Kaizen.

1. “If you are unhappy but aren’t sure why, try asking yourself this: If I were guaranteed not to fail, what would I be doing differently?”
2. “If you are trying to reach a specific goal, ask yourself every day: What is one small step I could take toward reaching my goal?”
3. “What is one small step I could take to improve my health (or relationships, or career, or any other area)?”
4. “Is there a person at work or in my personal life whose voice and input I haven’t heard in a long time? What small question could I ask this person?”
5. If somebody is annoying you, ask yourself, “What’s one good thing about this person?”
6. “What is one small thing that is special about me (or my spouse, or my organization)?”

I am using Kaizen methods to hone my writing skills.  Therefore, no matter what the goal- losing weight, quitting smoking, writing a blog the powerful method of kaizen is the way to achieve it.

Source: The Kaizen way by Robert Maurer

People who know me professionally / personally know that I am passionate about reading.  I am voracious reader. Since my childhood, I read on countless subjects but philosophy and history are my favorite subjects.

In 2020, I am reading / re-reading deliberately on numerous subjects to increase my understanding. Below you will find list of books, which I am currently reading or already read in 2020.

Re-reading:

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

The story of Philosophy

The communist manifesto

Berlin Diary

7 Powers foundations of business strategy

Doing agile right

Finished:

The courtroom Genius

The Goal

Hit Refresh

Blue Moon

In the name of Republic

Better Business writing

Elements of Eloquence

How to get lucky

Steal like an artist

New Books:

The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire

Pax indica

Kashmir untold story

The cultural defense of Nation

Pax Sinica

Stories at work

Rafa my story

Framing of constitution

An independent colonial judiciary

All the wrong turns

Cutting through spiritual materialism

Integration of Indian states

The pragmatic programmer

The lean start-up

Data Driven Marketing

Project management and budgeting

In 2016 or something I watched first episode of series named Suits and like everyone after learning about Photographic memory of Mike ( character in that series) I googled about it and found very interesting information and some fascinating books.

I instantly ordered few books like Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, Remember, Remember: Learn the Stuff You Thought You Never Could, Speed memory, speed-reading and Master Your Memory by Tony Buzan and How to Develop a Perfect Memory, Never Forget a Name or Face by Dominic O’Brien.

After reading those books, I learned many amazing things about human brain, brain structure, mental palace, mental mapping, neural network etc.

That time I was learning SAP and refreshing my German language skills and like Mike, I wanted to have photographic memory.  To get amazing and perfect memory. You have to create your own mental palace like memory athletes. (Google for more information)

This is how Mental Palace works: A trick called Mental Palace is a brilliant hack to remember a random piece of information e.g. a shuffled deck of cards. Imagine a palace with large rooms, vivid objects, and fancy props. Then as you are shown the cards, start placing these cards mentally inside the palace in such a manner that it creates a coherent story. Of course, it takes some practice. However, it is not very hard.

The best thing is that it is an imaginary palace. Which means you can even bend the space, twist the walls, and blow things up or shrink them down out of proportion. Do whatever makes the picture vivid and amusing to your grey cells.

Like memory athlete, I created my own mental palace of 100 rooms with 20 characters. I created whole story with those 20 characters to remember SAP transaction code , tables and German words and surprisingly I still remember everything about my imaginary palace and story therefore all SAP transactions codes, table name’s, German words and phrases are intact in my brain even after four years.

Our brain is wired to find pattern, structure, music and stories in information. We remember some stories, music, and national anthem for lifetime and the reason we teach kids the alphabet in a song and not as twenty-six individual letters. Song is the ultimate structuring device for language.

Now I am creating again my new mental palace to remember all landmark cases by Supreme Court of India.

If a count were to be made of the ten topmost books of the world. I have no doubt that Fight club name would find a prominent place therein.

Fight club is that kind of book, when you are all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

Chuck Palahniuk wrote the master book. I highly recommend   it to read. Book will blow your mind. Below are some beautiful quotes from book.

Enjoy.

We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We have all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off..

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything 

You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world.

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.

And last my favorite one : Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space

Even “Super You” needs help and support. There is no shame in asking for assistance. Push aside the pride and show respect for the talent others can bring to the table.

Moreover, remember that there is no such thing as a single-handed success: when you include and acknowledge all those in your corner, you propel yourself, your teammates and your supporters to greater heights.

– Author Unknown

Delegation is most important skill but still consider as underrated responsibility of manager. To be a great Leader, you have to learn how to delegate well

According to study, 60 % of new managers cannot delegate their old responsibility. As new leader, you might get away with it. However, in long run and as your responsibilities become more complex, the difference between an effective leader and a super-sized individual contributor with a leader’s title is painfully evident.

I have been in that situation therefore; I though to share my experience with you.

To me, the greatest success you can have as the person in charge is to orchestrate others to do things well without you. A step below that is doing things well yourself, and worst of all is doing things poorly yourself.

As new manager, make sure that you conduct a time- and-motion study of your previous, current and future task. Then identified people in your team who can take your previous tasks instantly and perform them excellently and most importantly allow yourself to let small things go. Letting go is the key,

Delegation is a win-win when done appropriately, however that does not mean that you can delegate just anything. To determine when delegation is most appropriate there are few key questions you need to ask yourself:

• Is there someone else who has (or can be given) the necessary information or expertise to complete the task? Essentially, is this a task that someone else can do, or is it critical that you do it yourself?
• Does the task provide an opportunity to grow and develop another person’s skills?

• Is this a task that I should delegate? Tasks critical for long-term success (for example, recruiting the right people for your team) genuinely do need your attention.

At the end I want to tell you, please don’t mistake delegation as passing work however see that as management tool to empower your subordinates.

I was having writer’s block. Then I decided to write on writer’s block.

André Gide said, “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. However, since no one was listening, everything must be said again”

If you think, you have nothing new to write about, write anyway.

You can always write on inspirational quote. This will act as icebreakers. You will never have to stare at an empty paper.

Great thoughtful quotes will acts as great catalysts to start to your train of thoughts moving.

By practicing deliberately, you can achieve anything.

I started deliberately reading the constitution of India and about famous constitutional lawyers to increase my understanding on our constitution and during my exploration, I learned about Nani Palkhivala and came to know about this brilliant book” the courtroom genius” by Soli J Sorabjee and Arvid P Datar, which I highly recommend to read.

Great justice H. R Khanna said,” If a count were to be made of the ten topmost lawyers of the world. I have no doubt that Mr. Palkhivala’s name would find a prominent place therein”

I certainly agree with justice Khanna. Nani Palkhivala reached the very pinnacle of success in the legal profession in less than twenty years. Without a privileged background, without a godfather in the legal profession, without a degree from Ivy League college, handicapped by a severe stammer in his childhood.

Mr. Palhivala had a sort of photographic memory, powers of concentration, focusing and speed-reading and he never wasted his time; he was great at time management. 

Nani Palhivala had an unshakable belief in democracy and he is the one who saved our democracy and our fundamental rights. Below you will find some famous cases he fought in the Supreme court of India, where he saved our democracy.

Bank Nationalisation 

The Privy Purses case

Famous and most important Keshvananda Bharati case (in this case he saved our constitution must read)

Minerva case

Bennett Coleman vs Union of India 

The mandal case

Election commision case

During the Keshvananda Bharati case, Nani was at his best. He was so elegant that justice Khanna said, “It was not nani who spoke. It was Divinity speaking through him”. 

Nani was guarding and protecting ferociously the rights and liberties of common man and simultaneously trying to preserve the integrity of the nation. Therefore, we must thank him.  

Source: The courtroom genius 

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.