Gamma Brainwaves: Peak Experience and the Power of Failure
Edition #005
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with the system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The Newsletter shares the source code, through quick snapshots, for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and helps you draw a blueprint on what it takes to get great things done.
How Will You Measure Your Life?
by Clayton Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon
Harvard Business School Professor, the late Clay Christensen, writes about how to apply his principles and thinking to people’s personal lives by sharing a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life. He says it is important to ask and find an answer three questions:
How can I be sure that I can be happy in my career?
How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness?
How can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?
The last question is really funny and attention seeking because two of the 32 people in his Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of Prof. Christensen at HBS. According to him, they were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.
Building a Culture of Happiness and Zero-Follow-ups
Kumar Vembu is the Founder and CEO of GoFrugal, one of India’s leading Point-of-Sale solutions for Retail, Restaurant and Distribution businesses. He is also a Co-Founder of Zoho Corporation, one of the world’s leading companies in the domain of Online Productivity Tools and SaaS Applications.
In this episode, Kumar talks about what it takes to build a great Company Culture, his perspectives on Problem-Solving for Customers and Product Development, and what it means to be a 'Happiness-first' Company.
The Art of Writing Software
This is a great video on how software is more than just writing a computer code, and why it is truly an art form. From FORTRAN to sophisticated programs in use today, discover the technology, creativity, hard work, and technique behind these elegant languages. Several software pioneers also share their stories.
Gamma Brainwaves: Peak Experience and the Power of Failure
In this brilliant blog post written by Dr. Greg Wells, a Performance Physiologist, Scientist, Athlete, and Author, he writes about Gamma Waves which influences our sensory input (sight, sound, feel, taste, touch) and all the processes in the brain, including working memory, perception, and attention.
Dr. Wells says one thing that gets in the way of achieving gamma states and peak moments is a Fear of Failure.
This is so true in everything that we do today, the fear of failing in what we have taken up or given to us. There is a very interesting point being made in the article that we have to reframe failure as an essential ingredient for growth.
What a profound thought.
So, what does it take to achieve gamma state or moments?
If you are not doing something out of your comfort-zone, you can be sure that you are settling to live below your potential or what you can ideally achieve.
Being comfortable with failing, is an attitude you have to get comfortable with. If you look at great athletes, musicians, film directors or actors what is interesting is that they have had many failures but that does not affect them in the their next project or tournament or concert or film.
People who work in companies always want to be seen succeeding in anything that they take-up or given to them. Companies also don’t encourage failure. This happens right from our schooling where failure is not handled well by parents, college and the society. The ability to build this pathway in our brain is very difficult. Thus, learning to embrace failure is an art.
About Early Success, Cost of Follow-ups and Fear of Failure.
Some lessons we learnt from this week’s missions:
We have to remember life is a marathon. Early success tends to blind people into thinking that they can do anything to achieve their career or personal goals. A great way to measure life is to look at brilliant students who studied with you in school and college, who were at the top of the class or smart colleagues who worked with at the start of your career and see where they have reached after two or three decades in their career. You will come to realise that the ones who succeed have a fine balance between career aspirations and personal value systems. If this resonance is missing, then they are one-time wonders and don’t stay consistent with what they can achieve. Find your balance.
The biggest corporate overhead not measured is the ‘Cost of Follow-ups’. There is no time, measure, and cost to this. What follow-ups tend to do is, it increases the number of resources to do work and a huge wastage of time, which is really money for a company. There is always an informal chatter around this but rarely does it bubble-up to be addressed by anybody in the company. Follow-ups to us is a measure of individual competency, involvement, engagement and accountability of the person in the company. Building a zero-follow-up culture can improve profits, reduce costs and save time leading to more engaged employees as well as satisfied customers.
Failure is often a bad word. Average people tend to move away from not doing things they have not done before or not setting goals that they may find it difficult to achieve etc. One thing that is not normally asked in any interview or seen in any resume if they failed in anything that the person has done. People find it a little embracing to speak about it. However, this may be an interesting data point on what kind of initiatives the person may be willing to take, risks or crisis that they can manage mentally, the degree of difficulty they can cope-up with and this is often an important ingredient in any job role at any level. This is worth thinking about. We believe, the question people should ask periodically is, if they have taken something they are not comfortable with, failed but learnt from, is critical factor for individual growth.