Everyday Life

  A  couple of months ago, I visited Bodhigram. It is a quiet place at the foothills of the Himalayas and ideal for people looking for some peace of mind and wanting to spend time close to nature, away from the city. One of the founders of that place suggested a book called “The Four Agreements” by Miguel Ruiz. It is a 140-page book yet I took almost a month to finish it. Not because I am a slow reader or it was a complicated book to read, but because the book is so nicely and rightly written that it makes you think. I am not sure if the things written in this book would have made less sense if I had not been questioning some patriarchal aspects of the Indian family structure. The book says that you should make four agreements with yourself. If you do that, your life changes for the better. The agreements are: 1. Be impeccable with your word; 2. Don’t take anything personally; 3. Don’t make assumptions; and 4. Do your best, but it is the intro chapter that made the most differ...

  Most organisations make decisions based on the data, whether these are decisions related to expansion, mergers, operations, or hiring. To make sure that the data gives us the right insights, the data should be clean, reliable, complete, and consistent, among others. But even if there are all the desirable traits, does the data give us the right insights? But by working for different organisations, what I have realised is that even if the data is complete, reliable, complete, or consistent if the context is missing, it can mislead, which can be quite dangerous. For example, the graph given below shows the number of days taken by different executives (A, B, C, D, and E) to resolve queries. Just by looking at the graph, it seems that A is not a good performer, while E is the best performer. Here, the data has all the qualities (such as completeness, integrity, etc.), and yet it misleads. One of the CXOs decides to fire A, but before that, he consults with the department head. In tha...

  One of the startups with which I worked was 200 employees strong at the time I joined. It was 4 years old at the time. I was working as an operations manager and chief of staff, so I was given the task of streamlining processes in different departments. One of the departments that I worked with was HR. The company didn’t have any HR software. All the finance-related work used to be handled by the finance head through Excel files. The HR executive used to share payslips with the employees by manually editing a Word file template, mostly with those who requested it. The result was that a lot of the time of the HR personnel was going into creating those payslips, and the employees were also suffering by not getting them on time. When I was given this task to streamline the processes, I started using one of my favorite tools, SpreadSheets (aka Google Sheets). We wrote a script and pasted the monthly payroll data (which was already being managed by the Finance Head) into a tab in the ...

  I recently came across a non-profit organization that was providing places for accommodation. Since there was low traffic of customers or guests, the check-in process was not streamlined, and the data was not properly organized. All the work was done over WhatsApp or by memorizing the details for a few days and then recording them in the documents or papers. Observing the situation, I asked the operations lead to use this simple tool, Google Sheets, to take care of the check-in process. 1. We created a Google Form that took the basic details of the guests and some necessary documents. A QR code was created for the form to make it even easier. 2. The form was linked to a Google Sheet where further steps were added, such as the room allocated, package chosen, the amount due, welcome email sent or not, etc. 3. Using basic techniques such as conditional formatting or data validation, the person handling it could understand whose bills were pending or to whom he had to send the feedba...

For the last 3 years, I have been wanting to do a solo trip but I could overcome my inner inhibitions. This article is about a journey from fear to fear and courage to overpower that fear. I chose  Pondicherry  for this journey. Pondicherry is about 800 km from the place where I currently stay, and it took me around 16 hours by bus to travel there. Despite being a famous tourist destination and just an overnight journey, it was a unique, different, and a milestone journey for me. It was different not just because I experienced a few unique things there but also because it was about overcoming a few inner hesitations. View of an old shop in Pondicherry from the bus A lot of people go to different cities, towns, and countries and make trips. What was different about my trip that you should give 5 minutes to read this article? It was different because it was my first solo trip, I identify as a woman, I am in my early 30s, I am from an economically middle-class family, and I am fr...

Life is full of happy, sad, boring, and joyful moments. Some people manage through it well, while others need help when the moments are difficult. I tend to fall into the latter category. Taking a little more time and needing a little more support than usual is where the difficulty begins. Recently, life was happening as usual, and then, due to a few things going out of balance, it took me almost two quarters to heal, and I am still in the process of doing that. The doctor told me that it was depression induced by anxiety. Thinking about it, I felt like sharing it. Sometimes seeing that someone else has also gone through the same journey assures us that it is okay to be sick, sad, or anxious. Challenges: Some of the challenges that I faced were: Finding a good professional help Explaining to your friends what you were going through Managing the office was one of the biggest triggers, but I had to do it. Signs: Having sudden anxiety: At the beginning, for a few times, I thought that it ...