Small, small insights - Fitness is a mindgame

So I started this "Crossfit training" thing at a gym near my house. I've set losing weight as a key target for the next few months. I've been told that I'm more than 15 Kgs overweight (I'm at 82  Kg currently). I looked around for gyms to continue my previous working out in  Singapore but then came across this thing called crossfit training. Its a group training thing with a trainer, an hour each day, a different kind of training each day (cardio, stretching..), and no fancy equipment. Its pretty intensive working out for the hour's duration. 

I was quite trepidatious about it - I like slow and steady training, I like to work out on my own, I've always hated the pushups and pull-ups and weights kind of thing. I've worked out for the past few months, but focussed on losing weight and my general fitness level is pretty low. But given that fitness was a major goal it made sense to take this on. The night before the first class I was quite stressed out - bracing for what I knew would be a major assault on my body the next day (It didn't disappoint, my body was sore for the next 5 days).  I missed the next day's training because I had to drop my mom-in-law off at Majestic and it got late in the night by the time we got back and I knew I wouldn't get enough rest for a 7:00am class. That was a major disappointment. Then I missed the next class because something else disturbed my mind the night before and I didn't get to sleep till 3 am (I have trouble sleeping when I'm upset). So I was really bummed. Then a couple of classed got cancelled due to various reasons. There was also a feeling of being out of place since I'm the oldest around (I don't know, I never notice when I'm doing age-inappropriate things). 

So these were the kind of things that were challenging me about staying with this rigorous fitness regimen. My point is that the above discussion of the challenges have all been about the mind, not about the physical aspect of working out. Its been about overcoming disappointments, managing my mood etc. The actual workouts themselves have been tough but fun, but physical capacity has not been the issue at all. Hence the title of this post "Fitness is a mindgame". I guess its true for lots of things in life, if not everything. 

PS: I had my 7th class now and its been very good so far!

Temple fatigue

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

I have a problem. (Well, I have many, but here's one)

I’m a bit of ‘culture vulture’. Visited lots of museums around the world. And lots of temples and cultural monuments. But more and more I’ve been feeling a sort of fatigue. For example, a single great painting has so many nuances and is worth spending a lot of time on, to get to understand. So what to do when there are thousands or hundreds of thousands of these ? Same with temples. The amount of work and mastery that went into the sculpture or architectural immensity of any of the the great cultural sites (World Heritage sites for example) is staggering. After the initial ‘wow’ feeling there is a feeling of being overwhelmed in front of such immensity. How do you engage with such a structure ? 

At the opposite end, there is also the feeling of ‘what’s the point of all this’ . Who were they trying to impress ? Build ever larger and more elaborate structures to what end ?

For some reason I get this feeling only for the ancients. I’ve not felt it in New York for example, which is also about architectural immensity, of a living sort. 

Critique, analysis, feedback, comments requested. 

Living responsibly in India

This post is to put some not-fully-thought-through ideas out there, as I’ve not seen anyone else talk about these things. The idea here is that while there are many things wrong with our country, people do not see it as practical to join social service or government or something. So can we come up with an idea of a responsible citizen, who leads a normal life in our country (whatever that is), but at the same time contributes to the greater common good. This post is about some things that we could do as public citizens while otherwise living our lives as we wish to.

The list is mostly about doing socially useful things, paying some attention to those less well-off than us in society. I'm not including here environmentally friendly actions, although they very well could. I didn't include them just to keep things focussed, and also because lots of other people have written about these. 

Some of these actions below are more difficult for the others, and which ones are more difficult would vary from person to person. Personally, I certainly don’t do all of these. The point is not to make being responsible a dull, boring, obligatory thing. You can find stuff that interests you and excites you and follow through with it. Doing one thing on this list very well is excellent, perhaps better than doing a lot of things in a small way. 

1.)  Voting and blood donation are, if you think about it, very basic civic and societal acts. You can’t outsource them. You can’t say, 'I don’t have the time', or 'I don’t believe it makes a difference' (although that is in fact what people do). Everyone from CEOs to the peon in his/her office ought to do these things.

2.) Engage with the people and environment around you. This has the advantage of having a selfish value too, the better these are, the better for you too. You become more integrated into the community you live in, and the community as a whole becomes stronger. Take part in the local Resident Welfare Association or Apartment Owners Association activities. Find out more about your household maid and your other support people and their life and challenges. Take part in, or start, an “Ugly Indian” style spot fixing intervention to clean up some sore spot near your home.    

3.) Not giving (or taking) bribes: I’ve found this personally very hard to do. Not that I go about giving bribes all day, but when I come across a situation where someone asks a bribe, I’ve found it difficult to figure out how to handle the situation and get my work done without giving the bribe. (Like here: )  

4.) Not dodging taxes: I find this quite easy to do, and I find a lot of people find this very difficult :-).  Being particular about buying stuff with a bill and not avoiding sales tax is another related thing. Undervaluing property in property transactions is a big one that most people struggle with.  Another related area is not doing transactions in black money. 

5.) Being a responsible tourist. More on that here:

http://despoki.blogspot.in/2016/08/responsible-tourism.html 

6.)  Volunteering at an NGO: Find an NGO near you whose area of work you are interested in. Spend some time with them finding out what they do and slowly start volunteering. The important thing I think is to develop a relationship with them over time. 
This can be hard to do as NGOs are often messy and chaotic and worse actually fraudulent. You have to be careful in picking and then don't get put off easily and persevere. 

Notes, Links and Further reading:

There are of course a lot of other things that you could do if you want to go deeper, like starting an NGO or social enterprise, travelling by public transport, harvesting rainwater, composting etc. 

The Ugly Indian:  http://www.theuglyindian.com/  

About blood donation:   http://despoki.blogspot.in/2016/09/information-on-blood-donation-with.html  And if you want to do something bigger there is bone marrow donation: http://www.cancer.net/navigating-cancer-care/diagnosing-cancer/tests-and-procedures/donating-bone-marrow

Travel notes from Ajanta and Ellora

Given the difficulty of getting there and the amount of walking between caves and the repetitiveness, some might find visiting Ajanta and Ellora to be more trouble than its worth. 

I spent only a day and covered both Ajanta and Ellora in that day, so I can’t write from a perspective of someone who’s visited the place in detail. Nevertheless, some observations.

Ajanta is located in an extremely scenic location. That’s one of the high points about it, that the tourist writing doesn’t capture.  The ‘zoomed-out’ view of the entire ensemble of caves is also spectacular, see photo. In some ways this ‘macro’ view of Ajanta is more satisfying than the micro. 

Ajanta was a retreat for Buddhist monks in the winter months. The purpose of most of the caves were housing for the monks, called viiharas.  Each dwelling had steps down the hillside to the river at the bottom. I find all this very evocative. I think the government should be make a nice film recreating what life would have been like when the caves were occupied, monks chanting, studying, arguing philosophy, maybe playing politics. Would make the caves really come to life 

Ajanta is famous for the paintings, but these are disappointing in reality. They are small, most of the photos in textbooks and tourist guides are closeups. They are also damaged. Most of the painting is also in large elaborate complex canvases, and it all blurs together after the first few. Like Indian dance, much of it is scenes from important stories and epics. You would miss all that if you don’t take a guide. Even if you do take a guide, it might get boring anyway, unless you know the stories well and have some attachment to them. Nevertheless, the paintings are very nice, and if you can be relaxed and cool about it, you could spend a memorable day, wandering slowly through all the caves. 

The sculpture and carvings are also gorgeous, but there’s such a profusion of it you don’t know what to do with it beyond a point. This is a problem I have with all the great monuments. I know I can’t create even a tiny fraction of what they did and after a while the sheer scale of the artistic accomplishment becomes too much and gets you down. Would be interested if other people have similar reactions.

There are 29 caves so it gets repetitive after a while. Read the guidebook carefully and pick and choose the ones you want to spend time on. 

I didn’t spend that much time at Ellora, and mostly visited the Kailasa or Kailasanatha temple. While the rest of the structures at Ellora are caves, this is an exception, its a proper temple.The scale of this and the grandeur (this same stuff again!) is amazing. The entire temple, as you may know carved out of the hillside by digging and hammering and excavation and whatnot, it was not constructed as most buildings are. The photo shows the rock face surrounding the temple. 

Going through the Archeological Society of India’s Ellora guide, I see that I missed quite a lot. Some spectacular sculptures and Jain and Brahmanical caves (Ajanta is only a Buddhist site). 

Logistics: 

Ajanta and Ellora are in different directions from Aurangabad. Ajanta is significantly farther away. You can try to go and come back from Ajanta in a single day but it would be tiring. There is a very agreeable MSTDC resort very close to Ajanta, at Fardapur. Some photos at: http://despoki.blogspot.in/2016/08/a-new-kind-of-hotel-ii.html There are other hotels in Fardapur too. Staying there overnight might be better. Bus connectivity from Ajanta to Fardapur is quite good, though the bus station at Aurangabad is pretty dirty and bus signages are in Marathi. Its about a 3.5 hour trip by bus. Ellora is a very doable full day trip from Aurangabad, though food options are not great. There’s good bus connectivity from Aurangabad to Ellora, the bus drops you right at the caves. 

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can go directly from Ajanta to Ellora by taking a bus towards Aurangabad and then switching to a shared auto at Phulambri

Important tips! 1.) Carry a torch with you. Its dark in the caves and the torch will help you see the sights better. 2.) You have to remove your footwear outside every cave. So lace shoes are not a good idea. Wear something you can put on and take off easily  

Ajanta - caves carved out of the hillside

Ajanta - gorgeous surroundings. Dem Buddhist monks knew how to do retreats !

The caves are in a gorge-like area, where there is a U-shape in the cliffs and the river beneath

Travelling companions, shared auto, Ajanta to Ellora

Ellora - The awesome Kailasa temple, excavated out of rock face

Ellora - Rock face adjacent to the Kailasa temple

Elements of a Life Philosophy - 2 : The nature of mind and thinking

Second in a series of posts trying to write down my philosophy of life. First one here: http://despoki.blogspot.in/2016/08/lifes-experiences-leaves-their-mark-on.html 

Most Indian spiritual thinkers in one way or the other talk of this notion of being without thought. At the extreme you will see writing that says that enlightenment is the state of being without thought. 

Meditation, as I’ve understood and practised it, is a process of being able to separate myself from identifying with my thoughts and instead being able to observe them. And sometimes the mind quietens down enough so that it is more or less blank. When I have reached that state in meditation, I always feel good about it. Often - unexpected thoughts pop out during this period of thoughtlessness, thoughts that would not have otherwise come to me. Thoughtlessness seems to give the space for stuff that’s buried in some way, to surface. 

Being able to observe thoughts implies that there is an ‘I’ different from the thoughts. This feels like it is a huge deal, but I’ve not been able to make much progress in taking this understanding further. 

We always identify ourselves with what we think. But our mind is an unreliable instrument. When extreme events happen they leave their mark on the mind, which stops behaving rationally in that area. So really we cannot depend on the mind to guide us correctly in most important decisions. As an example - to have a difficult conversation with a colleague at work might be objectively very important to clear up some misunderstandings or to work more effectively. But the mind protests mightily and comes up with all sorts of reasons not to have that conversation. So how to know when to trust what the mind says and when not to? If you accept that the mind is not always to be trusted, it opens a whole can of worms. Landmark’s way out of this impasse is the idea of the spoken word or declaration. Once we declare that we are something (‘happy’, ‘smart’) or going to do something (‘2 crores in turnover’) then that’s the guiding light. Our actions have to be in consonance with the declaration, not the mood or the thought of the moment. 

J Krishnamurti talked about thought arising when it is needed, for example to solve an intellectual problem, and then ceasing. Whereas normally our brain is always thinking of some thing or other. This resonates well with a distinction that someone at Landmark once made between ‘thinking’ and ‘thoughting’. The process of thinking is an active one, when we call on the brain to apply itself to some issue or matter at hand. Like making a business strategy, or planning the day's work. ‘Thoughting’ is the default process where thoughts come of their own volition. This is passive thinking and usually unproductive. A lot of our internal dialogue of complaining about people and events, worrying about the future, feeling bad (or good) about the past falls into this category of ‘thoughting’. If we eliminate 'thoughting' that leaves a lot of time when we don't need to think, we are just doing or being


Notes:
Ramana Maharishi on thoughts: " All thoughts are inconsistent with realisation. The right thing to do is exclude thoughts of oneself and all other thoughts. Thought is one thing and realisation is quite another"

Organising life and work

 I offer my experiences with organising my stuff in the hope that it may be of some value to others: 

I think a basic idea with organising is to have life broken into lots of tasks and allocate time to each task. A kind of ideal state is when you don’t have to think about what to do next or what to do today; that’s all decided and you just have to go about doing what was planned. Of course, that means that you schedule time in for planning and scheduling. And it could take quite a bit of time, but its time well spent. All this may sound to many people like a mechanical and soulless existence. It did, to me too. But when you take on organising yourself and gain some mastery, life on this side feels a lot more fulfilling, peaceful and ordered. Its also key to getting a lot more done. 

Being good at this stuff is particularly important if you want to work on your own (like a freelancer) or you want to take some time off. In these sorts of situations you have to be very disciplined about structuring your time, as there is no outside order that is imposed on you, like when you work at a salaried job. 

The other fundamental thing about organising is to clarify for yourself what you want to achieve and in what time frame. This exercise is something that most of us are completely unfamiliar with and uncomfortable with, beyond some basic annual planning exercise at work. But it has enormous value. Can you think about where you want to be in different aspects of your life in 10 years ? 5 years ? A year ? Start with the longest timeframe that you can and then work backwards to set milestones for shorter timeframes. Keep these goals 'visible' to you in some way, like pasting them up especially the longer-term ones. Its very easy to forget about longer-term things when caught up in the demands of daily life. 

Most of the time, I work with a spreadsheet for organising myself. I try to to capture everything about my life that matters to me on that sheet. It has worksheets like “Dashboard”, “Health” , “Finances” , “Personal”, “Special Projects” 

My basic unit of work is a to-do item and I maintain lots of to-do lists

Its important to get to-do's out of your head and on the spreadsheet (or whatever you use to plan). When tasks are in your head, they take your attention away from what you should be giving your attention to. By putting them on your spreadsheet (and developing a habit of scheduling them and doing them) you get them quickly out of your head.

When you have a fast-moving to-do list, like stuff that needs to get done at work this week, I find it motivating to mark off those things that are done in green or keep track of them by what percentage is still to be done so I get a feeling of making progress. 

One particular kind of to-do that is useful is what I whimsically call “Small small things”. These are (as the name suggests) small tasks (like filling out an expense report, or buying something ) that are not difficult to do but that may be irksome or that you tend to put off. You could set up a routine of blocking off time on your calendar each day to attend to these. Occasionally, set a whole day aside for these. 

A very nice tool is the Momentum extension for the Chrome browser. You can download it here, its free. I use it atleast some of the time, and whenever I do, it always pays off. The key thing it has is a question “What is your main focus for the day?” and an answer that you write down and that you see everytime you open a new browser window or tab. Wonderful for clarifying your own priority for the day and sticking to it. 

Finally, one  requirement for success in organising is beyond any ideas and tools like the above. Its the ability to follow through and do painful tasks that need to be done. You can plan and schedule all you want, but when the time comes you need to have the discipline to do whatever needs to be be done and what you scheduled. If you procrastinate or avoid, some key things will not get done and your success is at risk. 

If you’re by nature a unsystematic person and find the above far too difficult to do but you want to do it, Landmark’s Self Expression and Leadership Programme is a powerful way to practise and gain the discipline of organising

Do leave a comment if you found any of the above useful to you, or add your own organising tips 

Afternotes:

The above is what I aspire to, its not what I always or fully do. The next level of mastery is always out there..

Deepak Menon (https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepak-menon-0468045) says he finds a combination of Trello and Google Calendar very effective. Hopefully a guest post from him on this soon

Information on blood donation (with a focus on Bangalore)

In the hustle of daily life, can we make time for the humanistic activity of blood donation. Like voting, its a duty of every citizen. 

Here are some resources that help in donating and receiving blood. If you can add to the information here to make it more comprehensive and useful, please leave a comment 

For finding blood when someone is is need:

1.) Call this number 94800 44444 where they know the blood availability situation at blood banks in most areas of Karnataka and can tell you if there is a nearby bank that can supply your need. 

The facility is run by Sankalp Foundation sankalpfoundation.org  and Comprehensive Trauma Consortium 

2.) Check the following donor databases: 

http://friends2support.org  

http://blooddonors.in/ 

For donating blood:

1.) See the useful primer at Citizen Matters http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/blood-donation-faq-guide on eligibility to donate etc. 

2.) Register at the same databases above 

http://friends2support.org 

http://blooddonors.in/ 

3.) This Google map view shows some of the blood banks in Bangalore, and can help you find one near you

https://www.google.co.in/maps/search/blood+bank/@12.9505056,77.5763924,13z?hl=en 

4.) Serial blood donor Rudresh Kalyani (www.facebooks.com/rudresh.kalyani) says its very simple to donate, nearly every area of Bangalore has a hospital and/or a blood bank that accepts blood. 

5.)From a quick web search I could find only one hospital that had a webpage for those who want to donate blood at the hospital:

Vydehi (http://www.vims.ac.in/healthcare/blood-bank.html) 

General information about blood donation:

India still has a blood shortage, though hearteningly it seems to be quickly coming down (from 17% in 2013-14 to 9% in 2016). However there is a lot of variation geographically - some areas have an excess and some areas have a severe deficiency. Of course rural areas have a much bigger problem than urban areas. The law says that paid blood donations are not allowed, but in practice this still seems to happen. Some articles:

http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/why-india-needs-35-tankers-of-blood-89887

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/India-facing-a-blood-shortage-of-3-million-units/articleshow/36492006.cms

http://www.sankalpindia.net 

Small small insights - sugar

Natural sugar (from fruit) is packaged so that there is not too high a concentration of sugar. You can't eat huge quantities of it - your stomach gets full. So there's a built-in limit. You also get some other nutrients for free. With refined sugar,  you can get a highly concentrated dose of sugar and nobody's checking.  No extra nutrients either. 

I've cut down on refined sugar a great deal. One of the noticeable effects over time is that your mood is more stable. You don't go through a cycle of sugar craving followed by eating something sweet and getting a sugar high. I never noticed that I was going through this cycle until I cut down on the sugar.

Stick to fruit sugar.


A previous post on food/cooking: http://despoki.blogspot.in/2009/01/some-thoughts.html 

Development Economics

One of the highlights of the MPA course at the Lee Kuan Yew School was the module on Development Economics. I found myself quite often feeling a sense of wonder and exhilaration in the class that I didn’t feel in any other class and that I didn’t expect to feel in a classroom. 

It is hard to pin down where the feeling came from. I think it was the approach and worldview of economics, applied to areas that I was particularly interested in, like education and health. As I got from the course, the approach was to try to get at human behaviour in these situations and figure out what a rational individual would do to maximise their well-being. Then try to capture that in equations and you got a working model of the world. Get data from the real world and see how well things seem to fit. 

For example, in education: the basic way of looking at it is that education is a way to improve your earning capacity. So you invest now in education in order to improve your later earnings. Then it becomes an optimisation problem: how many years of education should you invest in now (and forgoing current earning opportunities too) so that your overall life-earnings are maximised. Then you can start adding complexity to the model: the situation varies from person to person - some people get more out of their education so the returns from education have to be parameterised by a person-specific co-efficient. And then you get into why education increases your earning capacity - could be through direct increase in your capability to create wealth or could be through a ‘signalling’ effect, where the fact that you’ve passed some exams etc. shows that you have some intellectual capacity. And more such stuff.

On the empirical side, many people have looked at how average incomes of large groups of people vary with education. One study in the US arrived at a figure of a 7% increase in earnings for every additional year of schooling. 

In health it works like this: health is something you invest in, in time (with its opportunity cost) and money. It also depreciates on its own every year. Good health lets you earn more, and enjoy leisure more, thereby contributing to your utility/well-being. And there are competing demands on your money other than health - like daily consumption, leisure activities etc. So again its an optimisation problem of how much you invest in it in order to maximise your utility. 

This modelling also, in theory, shows the role of public policy. People do what they do to maximise their personal utility. However there are externalities to health and education and government wants people to have more of them. So government needs to intervene in these equations :-) , in the appropriate way so that people consume more of these goods than they otherwise would. 

We also looked at other things like agriculture and credit markets. For example, the landlord/tenant relationship in agriculture can be of different types: landlord can pay for part of the cost of raising the crop, he could get a fixed amount each crop irrespective of the actual profits, or there could be profit (and loss) sharing arrangements. Its possible to model these and theoretically arrive at conditions where different types of contracts are preferred. There are some nice papers that show that the theory seems to hold in practice. 

Another highlight of the course for me was the paper reproduction exercise. Good academic papers nowadays are accompanied by an upload of the actual data and the software code used to analyse the data. So its possible to reproduce the data analysis done in the paper and see if you get the same results. There are levels of complexity to this:

• you can run exactly the same code using the same data. Of course that’s not too much fun 
• you can fiddle with the code a bit and try to do slightly different things 
• in special cases you could collect the data yourself and reproduce the results from scratch. There’s a celebrated case in academia of a famous papers’ results being proved wrong in this way.  This article nicely describes that : http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22223190 

I chose to do a paper on water that was co-authored by the very well-known economist at J-PAL , Esther Duflo. It was a very fulfilling exercise and I found some minor discrepancies too, which was a big kick. 

The original paper is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4u37kptdcdjrund/%2BDuflo_2012_Happiness%20on%20tap.pdf?dl=0 

My report on the replication is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jcv96iatph8ze9r/Paper%20Reproduction%20Report.docx?dl=0 

Yvonne Jie Chen was the teacher, and her enthusiasm for the material was infectious. 

The course textbook was “Development Economics” by Debraj Ray. Well-written, erudite as hell and an enjoyable read but pretty uphill going for me atleast because of the intellectual level of the subject matter. I finally read less than 10% of the book, but it was still pretty good! 

Notes, Further Reading:
For a compilation of resources on studying public policy in general and at the LKY School, see: http://despoki.blogspot.in/p/studying-public-policy-and.html 

On (Not) Living in the past

Life’s experiences leaves their mark on us. Most of the time we think of this as positive - learning from life. But experiences also distort our thinking. Someone who has been through severe poverty may go through life always insecure even if rationally they have made enough to feel secure. Someone whose parents have had a difficult marriage or who comes from a broken household will likely carry that over to their own marriage. They have no other experience on which to base their behaviour in marriage. 

This holds true at a societal level too. Certain ideas have strong hold on the national imagination and it is difficult for people to think rationally about this. Examples include the Kashmir issue in India and the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

One of the most valuable services that a human can provide another is to free them from this grip of the past, to help them to drop their 'baggage'. To quote from Landmark, to be “informed by the past, but not limited by it”.  To help a person to design their future, outside of the constraints of the past. However, the requirement for such a service is not even widely recognised today, leave alone provided. 

On a national level, I see an impact from this, for poverty alleviation and national progress, economically and otherwise. In particular, moving people out of poverty can be quite challenging because of the mindset changes required of the poor.  If societies as a whole could provide  service, it stands to reason that, freed from the ‘demons’ on the past, individuals and therefore societies will progress much more rapidly and in a  win-win way, than they could otherwise.