Self destruction

I self destruct, a lot. I am like the bounty hunter droid in the first episode of Mandalorian. I go into perfect situations, I got all the power and am taking out the bad guys. Suddenly, once I take a minor hit or two, I reach for the self destruct button. I am just happy today that I am beginning to realize this just now - at the age of 45. Better late than never! 

The magic lies in realizing in the moment that I am self destructing. That realization has two effects. One, a choice materializes. A choice to not self destruct or continue self destruction. Two, after the moment passes, there is time to look back. I am looking back right now as I write this. 

What is self destruction you ask? I don't know what everyone else thinks of it. For me, it shows up in small, subtle forms many times through the day. For example, when I am eating a perfect meal with some great conversation, I might hear just one sentence or two that affects me negatively in some way, then, I self destruct. I start adding on spices, or butter and that one extra serving of whatever it is and it just spirals down from there. Sometimes I realize what I am doing and I am able to summon my good senses and stop. Other times, I realize it and I keep going. Later, when I look back, I realize how the moment unfolded. I devise a strategy to avoid self destruction the next time.

Awareness is what I need. I need self awareness, an awareness of the 5 senses, an awareness of the mental state, my own heart beat, my own breathing and an awareness of the physical state. I think some of these feelings work in unison, in sort of a crescendo, to affect me positively at times and negatively at times. When I am practicing Golf at golftec, on some days, the senses get together to help me drive my best shots, consistent, long, straight shots at the right distance. When, I am unawares, one after another all senses collaborate to sabotage my game. It is almost as though my senses conspire to hide themselves from me until I am so overwhelmed that I participate in those shenanigans to the point of self destructions.

In future, I hope to become more aware of myself and avoid self destruction.

Kama Bistro - La Grange

I have had severe allergies over our Christmas and New Years vacation and that left me miserable for a good 3 weeks. I saw my Doctor and was on the mend. I also had my booster shot appointment on Thursday Jan 20th at Orland Park, Illinois. Thursday January 20th just seemed to be an ideal day to get dinner outside and kick of our "Adventures of a Hungry Couple". A day before the booster appointment, I looked for Indian Cuisine near my vaccination clinic and I was surprised to find very few that were within a few miles. Kama Bistro was about 15 miles away and it has been on my list of places to try since quite long. I knew of it, but, had never been before. I reserved it on opentable.com. Visali and I went there after my booster.

We arrived around 7:30 pm and found parking by the BNSF train station parking for La Grange Road, a few steps away from the restaurant which is well located on main street. It has a nice glass facia with warm, comfortable lighting inside. They asked for our vaccination status and had us seated at a nice booth. I was expectant and happy to be there. The menu looked good. The menu was not the longest or deepest, but it looked good. The menu seemed to promise "Hey, what I have is worth it. Go ahead and try.". The server arrived quickly and I ordered a mango lassi while Visali ordered a Love - Rooibos hot tea. My mango lassi was good. It was not overly sugary and it felt refreshing. Visali liked her tea - it was aromatic and soothing to her.

Mango Lassi

Love - Rooibos Hot Tea

We spent a few minutes on the drinks when the server asked about our preferences. The server took time to describe the items and all that conversation whetted my appetite. For appetizers, we ordered the Crispy Chili Potatoes and Paneer Lemon Tadka. Crispy Chili Potatoes were good. The food was super hot as served and felt like it came from a pan on the stove (not reheated). Potatoes were just well crisped on the outside and soft, sweet on the inside. I could not tell that Ketchup was one of the ingredients, Visali could tell and then we confirmed from the menu that indeed, it had "Kama Ketchup" in it. It was tangy, sweet and had a chili kick to it. The cold weather outside, sweet Mango Lassi and then the Crispy Chili Potatoes were all going very well for me. The Paneer Lemon Tadka also turned out to be a fresh item. I don't think I can compare it to anything else before that day. Later we learnt from our server that the chef blends French and Indian Cuisine in some of their items and Lemon Tadka was one of those. Je pense que c'est une bonne idee. The Lemon Tadka had house made paneer. Upon asking, the server reminded us that all menu items were house made from scratch. The Lemon Paneer Tadka had the paneer and creamy soup or gravy like base. After the first few bites, I felt like the cream was a bit too much and I somewhat struggled to imagine a French citizen eating that Lemon Paneer Tadka - admittedly, I have no knowledge of French food except for what they show in "Emily in Paris" (I binged season 1 last year and will binge season 2 later). Both our items were for eating with a spoon, like eating a thick soup served in a dish (not a bowl) with chunks of paneer and potato. 

Crispy Chili Potato

Lemon Paneer Tadka

For the main course, we chatted again with the server and landed on Kama-Kaze Vindaloo (medium spicy) and Paneer Black Pepper Bhujnee. Interestingly, the menu had an "Add-On" section containing a few other of my favorites. I ordered Eggplant Bharta from that add-on menu. For breads, I got Paratha and Pudina Paratha. When the food arrived, it looked and smelled great. The Vindaloo was not too hot and the Black Pepper Bhujnee was - peppery. Parathas were fresh and perfectly cooked. My Eggplant Bharta started out good as well. About half way into the main course is when we started talking earnestly about the food. So far, it was all "ra, ra, go, go", but as the belly started filling up, we started becoming a little more selective and started feeling new tastes and textures. Lets just say that the food was better and the ingredients felt fresher than any other Indian Cuisine restaurant I have been to. Beyond that, there was a nagging feeling that the chef was simply too generous with cream and oils. The Vindaloo, the Bhujnee and the Eggplant each could have been laid on a strainer to drain some of the cooking oil, better yet, the chef could have started with a little less oil. I have never enjoyed vindaloo because it is a one track dish - just red hot chili pepper (in this case Bhut Jholokia). The black pepper in the Black Pepper Bhujnee was too coarse for my taste. The eggplant was not fire roasted enough and hence was too mushy and I did not taste any herbs in it. This is a common problem with Indian Cuisine in United States. It is almost as though all chefs have extrapolated the "chunks" and "mush" construction of the Chicken Tikka Masala on to every other dish even if those dishes were originally meant to have a crispy texture of main individual ingredients. At one point, to demonstrate the oil, I picked up a spoonful of Eggplant Bharta and gently twisted my wrist for the spoon to drain a stream of oil back into the dish that I picked it up from. I sincerely felt sorry for myself because I had come deliciously close to calling this one of the best restaurants I had eaten at.

Eggplant Bharta

Paneer Black Pepper Bhujnee

Kama-Kaze Vindaloo

Paratha

Pudina Paratha

For dessert, I ordered Kama Bistro's take on the Malai Kulfi. Malai Kulfi is my favorite kind of Indian ice cream. The server described a malai kulfi served with Kama Bistro's own take with a few other spices, sweets and tart. I liked the malai kulfi, although, I have to say that this one was probably made from heavy whipping cream from the store and was too low on sugar. In my opinion, Malai Kulfi tastes better when made from condensed cream than just whipping cream. It was served in small chunks with strawberries, a raisin sauce and some nuts. I liked the dish but, I sorely lamented the kulfi itself.

Overall, I don't think I will remember this as my best Indian Cuisine restaurant. It definitely has a fresh take on some of the food, it is high end, servers are knowledgeable, friendly and it has a decent ambience. On the way back, Visali and I tried to compare this experience with other experiences. We ended up saying that this Indian Cuisine restaurant wanted to be like a Sunda (Asian Fusion) or Tanta (Peruvian Fusion) but fell way short.

We continue, on the Adventures of a Hungry Couple. Next up are Chicago Curry House and Shikara.

The Adventures of a Hungry Couple - the quest for good Indian Cuisine in Chicago

I have only rarely eaten good Indian Cuisine in restaurants in the United States. There are only handful of restaurants out of 100s that I recall the taste and the experience of. To say the least, that is shocking. Having said so, I am now not so sure what exactly is shocking. Is it shocking that I don't like the Indian Cuisine that I have eaten or is it shocking that Indian Cuisine restaurants in the United States really suck? There is one way to answer that question. Visali and I are going to try out one new Indian restaurant every week and write a review. We will go in with an open mind and a empty belly. We will sample as many items as we can and I will follow up with a blog here. I want to believe that it is shocking that I don't like the Indian Cuisine that I have eaten. I want to collect evidence for my hunch that there must be some place out there that serves good Indian Cuisine.

Now, let me state a few traits I would look for in this adventure. For one, the food must taste fresh and reasonably balanced. The word "fresh" here means it should feel like the cook heard me order the paneer korma and then chopped up the herbs, grated the paneer, took fresh oil from the container, fired up the kadhai (wok) and made that korma. The words "reasonably balanced" means, each item should have the right amount of flavor, bite and texture while reasonably matching up with the rest of the items we order. That is mainly it. Fresh and Reasonably Balanced. At this moment, I do not care much about other stuff such as ambience, service, price and other non food items. This is definitely about the food.

Note: I will write this blog and the series following this while addressing all experiences as "My" experiences or "I" doing things. However, my wife Visali is going to be an equal partner. When there is reason to relate to our individual experiences separately in the same dinner, I will call that out separately. So, "I" means "Us" unless I say "I" and "Her" specifically in the same context. I know! Complicated.

If you like a restaurant, do let me know.

Self Importance is unimportant - shed it

 How important am I? On the cosmic scale, not at all. What I need to learn is that even on the microscopic scale, I am not important at all. This is difficult to understand. "I am not important!" Who says that? No one can say that without a little loss of self-esteem. I am starting to think if one can say "I am not important!" without losing any self-esteem, then, one has found the secret to happiness. 

It seems to be a choice in everything we do moment to moment in our lives. When performing any activity, we must make a choice. How important am I? How important are my feelings? If we choose to make ourselves important and attach our feelings to the result of activities, then, we are bound to controlled by our activities. Instead, if we choose to say, "I am not important" and "my feelings are not important", then, we become detached with the work we are performing or its results. Suddenly, the work we are performing need not satisfy us, success does not come from the success of the activity we perform. I think that is the secret to happiness.

I would like to apply this secret to my work and life everyday this year. I have meditated on and off over many years after first reading Jon Kabat Zinn way back. At first, I found it very easy, then, at some point, I simply lost interest. I should have kept it up. I think this realization I had today about my importance (or the lack thereof) is the core of meditation. One goal of meditation is to disconnect the material world from the soul, to disconnect the outside from the inside. I think answering the question "How important am I?" and asking it over and over again in the context of activities we perform is an important self-aligning, self-correcting mechanism to get happier moment after moment.

Wish me luck. I wish you luck.

Meeting hell

Give me hellfire and brimstone. Don't give me meetings. I mean I would rather be dead. Some meetings are good, but most suck the air out of my lungs. The big problem is that half the time, participants are never well prepared, and the meeting organizers never think of what they want the meeting to end with. Here are my suggestions for all meeting organizers all over the world.

Suggestion 1: Set an Agenda

I mean, people! Please! I might be working on 5 different things and my wife and kids may be wanting other things from me. I have not gone working out for 5 days straight. It is cold outside. I don't have enough money in my bank and I drank too much last night. You expect me to read your mind on what your meeting is about? At the very least, set bullet point agenda of what you want to talk about. What does an agenda look like you ask? Well, what is the meeting about? Is there a problem that we need to collectively solve? Then, lead with the problem statement in one sentence containing one subject, one predicate and as few conjunctions as possible. Follow that with a few bullet points describing potential solutions and who will do what part of that solution. Do we need to agree on a difficult topic? Start with the topic itself. Chase with a call to action to participants that they must formulate their thoughts and bring to the meeting. Tell them that they must reach a consensus before the end of the meeting. Sometimes, it feels like these things are obvious, but that is never true. Without a written agenda, participants will often make up their own agenda or highjack your meeting. Don't let them.

Suggestion 2: Budget time

Do you have all the time to listen to your grandma talking about her problems? What makes you think anyone wants to listen to anyone else in your meeting? Hence, feel free to budget time. If there are 6 people in a meeting and the meeting is for an hour, have a think about who gets to talk for how long. If the meeting is to discuss a person's requirements for the next 2 quarters or address their issues from the last interaction, then, budget 30 minutes for that person and 6 minutes each for the remaining 5. If the meeting is discuss highway construction plans, then, offer 10 minutes to each participant. You may think that often times, a single meeting participant "just emerges" as the important participant. Thats baloney. Having a free reign on time allows the noisiest person to self-emerge as the important participant. Don't allow that.

Suggestion 3: Ask your participants to pre-send a written response

You know that smooth talking person who can walk into a bank, impress upon the banker how rich they are and walk out with a million-dollar loan? Neither do I. Banks have gotten smarter. They use a credit score, financial statements, purpose statements, character statements and even mortgage your house to give you a loan. Why can't you expect a meeting participant to send you a brief write up or a diagram of their opinion of the topic at hand before the meeting starts? Force them to prove that their participation in the meeting is important and meaningful. Additionally, they will be forced to prepare. Preparation has two benefits. Firstly, they will bring their knowledge to the meeting. Secondly, if they are wrong, they will learn that they are wrong and will learn new stuff from the meeting. 

Suggestion 4: Cancel your meeting

If it can be done on teams chat, google chat, zoom chat, telegram chat, whatsapp chat asynchronously (meaning, with about 15 minutes to an hour between chat messages) then, do you really need to spend collective hours on a phone call? Really?

Please. Give me hell.

Writing is hard

For me, writing is hard. Writing is hard because I am busy working, living or thinking about working and living. Now, I have started to feel that I could probably skip the thinking about working and living and replace that with writing. Hopefully, in 2022, I will busy working, living and writing.

The idea is to write often. Just get into the zone of expressing things publicly. No matter what the topic, or how frivolous. Just write. In normal course of life, whether I am at work or spending time with family, I am concerned with being right. In 2022, I want to be just concerned with the write (not right, you see what I just did there?). 

To writing, here is a poem.

Write they say?, Right, they say.

But what about, by the way?

When? Between meetings and eating?

Normally, I wish I was sleeping.

I've been trying to write since August last year. Now, I realize that trying to write itself is taxing, time consuming activity. I think the actual task of writing itself may be much more fun and fast. 

Well, well, well, what could I write about? Oh there are so many things to write about. The key is to not fret about what to write about. How many times do I reminisce times gone by in a week? 3? 5? 10? Each of those are opportunities to write. How often do I feel intensely more intelligent than the rest of the world? Those are the number of times I can write. It seems to me that there are many opportunities to write. See this post itself? See how I am writing about my desire to write. This itself is a great piece to write. 

In short, writing does seem hard, but, in reality, it is really easy. All I gotta do is write. But that's hard!

A few new books I read recently

I have not written since Jan 22 and now it is May 11! Soon, June will be upon us and before you know it, we will have finished more than half a year of 2021. It does not feel too long because I have been busy. 

Anyway, today, I want to write about books I read since the last one I finished. First of all, I must say that I have been on a tear! Here is the entire list at first and below it I will review briefly.

1. The Culture Map - Erin Meyer

2. No Filter: Instagram - Sarah Frier

3. Invent and Wander - Jeff Bezos 

4. This is Marketing - Seth Godin

5. I am afraid, Debbie from Marketing has left for the day - Morten Munster

6. Drug use for grown-ups - Dr. Carl L Hart

7. How to avoid a climate disaster - Bill Gates

8. Power of Habits - Charles Duhigg

9. Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawande

10. Talking to Goats - Jim Gray

11. Mentors - Russell Brand

12. Hard Crowd - Rachel Kushner

13. A Runner's High - Dean Karnazes

14. Educated - Dr. Tara Westover.

Educated

I must start with the last book first. Today, I finished "Educated" by Dr. Tara Westover. When the book finished, I found myself holding back tears and walking to the bathroom to hide. I connected to Tara Westover in some ways. While Westover's case is extreme - meaning she suffered violent abuse at the hands of her own Father and Brother and then got out of it to go to Cambridge and Harvard - I also suffered mild abuse growing up. She writes in detail about her experience living in a remote Idaho town under the omni-present shadow of her abusive, mentally ill and survivalist father. The father is so deeply mired in conjured conspiracy theories that he does not allow medicine, science, schools, police, telephone, tv in his house. The first thought I had as I got through the first few pages was about economic inequality - how can one part of Idaho be so far behind the rest of the world in today's day and age? She writes how her father, due to his deep distrust in humanity and utterly blind faith in the Mormon God, leads his children down a dangerous path. Reading through this part of the book, I felt like "I've been here". I did not suffer anywhere nearly as much as she did. However, I am now convinced for a few years that any trauma in childhood is too much trauma. It takes years for an adult human being to shed poor experiences when growing up. In the middle of the book, she describes her unlikely journey through college in Brigham Young University, Utah. She writes about her introduction to the real world and how she starts to deal with her own feelings about her family. Here, again, I felt a connection to how I felt when I first left home, then my birth-country to come to the United States. I cannot say I had the same experiences as her, but, I had similar feelings about myself as she had about herself. I felt guilt, sympathy, excitement, fear, loneliness and fatigue, all at the same time for many  years. By the time I got to the third part of the book, I was deeply curious about what she did next. I wanted to read the rest non-stop so I could learn what she did to get out of her funk and blossom into the life that she wanted for herself. So, I did read non-stop and shed a tear at the end of the book just because it was so overwhelming, so truthful, so visceral to me. I imagine that to many readers, this book is about poverty, stupidity turned into a success story through individual perseverance and some therapeutic experiences. I can see how some will draw parallels to another similar book titled Hillbilly Elegy. In my opinion, this is different. This is about her education about herself. Something I sorely need for myself.

A Runner's High, Hard Crowd and Mentors

I had watched a news interview of Dean Karnazes very long ago. I was amazed! Now, reading his book for the first time, I am not that amazed! I mean, he is definitely a beast and deserves everything he has. My objection is to his superlative way of thinking about running and runners. It is facetious at best and dishonest at worst. Ultra running is an industry and he is part of it. Boy got bored, boy started running and boy made money. That is it. Of course, I am doing myself a disservice by judging him so harshly after reading only one book and watching a 30 second clip 10 years ago. Just not my type of a book. Full disclosure: I have high blood pressure, I am always stressed and I need to run. I am running these days, but, I am not even one quarter of the healthy person I used to be 10 years ago. I hope to get back on track!

Hard Crowd was in the Sunday NYT book review. I was looking for something different, possibly even fiction. Rachel Kushner wrote mostly fiction and this was a collection of non-fiction essays. That seemed like a good break from my usual fare. I am thrilled to report that I loved this book. First of all, the writing style was novel to me. I am accustomed to reading non-fiction, with facts, figures, evidence and experiments. This was just a story book of real things. Plus, some of these essays were shockingly good.

Russell Brand is awesome, Mentors is his book. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is one of my favorite comedies. He married Katy Perry! Then he had issues and went to rehab. Now, he is a new age podcast guru. I have heard him talk and I love his talks. He tackles many topics with aplomb. When his book came out, I wanted to read - just because it was from him. I don't remember any of it. Having a book by him reminds me of the evening when I dragged my wife to an auditorium to hear Cameron Diaz talk about her book and sign a copy. I have the book, I have no idea what is in it. :)

Talking to Goats

If you know who Jim Gray is, then you probably should read this book. I did not know who he was, but, I felt like it would be great to read an outsider's perspective on all these GOAT (Greatest Of All Times) athletes. I liked the book, I liked to read about all those stories from 80s and 90s. However, this book, like many others written in twilight of career was an explanation of Jim Gray's life. It just so happens that Jim Gray had a great life among some of the best people, events and stories of his lifetime. Good for him and good for anyone into sports. 

Books about "Habits"

I read a series of books about habit forming. These I read to affect some much needed change in my personal life as well as my work. It started with a quest to distill my work around digital marketing. I wanted to learn how to effectively persuade prospects to buy my services. I am well versed with the process and the technology. However, the question I had (I still have), is "What exactly should I do day to day to become a good salesperson". At first I read This is Marketing by Seth Godin. In many was Seth Godin is the proto digital marketer. He started in 1984 before it was a thing. He has a different way to look at it compared to most street friendly folks. It is easy to dismiss him as an idealist. I think "This is Marketing" was an eye opening book for me. To me it cut through the crap and defined what marketing means today. What does social media mean to marketing? How do ads help (or not)? Why should there be content? And what should be the driving goal behind all of this? These are fundamental questions and Seth's book covers some potential answers. 

From This is Marketing, I found "I am afraid Debbie from Marketing has left for the day". This is a very nice book. Morten Munster has done a great job of defining the marketing problem and providing a real, powerful process to solve the problem. In essence, he defines the problem as "a need to make change". For example, you need your customers to change their habit and instead buy your product. Then, he goes on to postulate that this is a System 1 problem. System 1 and System 2 thinking or "Fast and Slow" are behavioral science concepts from a Nobel prize winning scientist Daniel Kahneman. System 1 is fast, impulsive decision making. Most people make decisions based on such sort of thinking. To affect change the marketer (or any change agent) must analyze barriers, then design a "cue-response-reward" cycle that causes lasting change. I truly liked this book and wished I had purchased a physical copy to read and annotate instead of my audible book. I probably will do that some day soon.

Another book on the same topic is Power of Habits. This book does away with theory and measurement of any kind and focusses on the cue-response-reward cycle. I found the basic concepts similar to Morten Munsters book, but, the difference is that Munster's book is a lot more fun to read and has better examples from real, practical life. I think I may read this book again in paper form.

Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto is another one about habits. He has described how a simple change to standard procedures leads to a series of actions by humans that lead to better outcomes. Even though he is a cancer surgeon and his major success is in applying checklists to hospitals, he goes into some detail about how checklists are used in a myriad of situations. For example, flying a plane, constructing a high rise building and running war operations. Before reading the book, I felt like why would a cancer surgeon write a whole book about something as mundane as a checklist? He goes into that. Checklists are not just a guard rail, in fact, in critical, high stress, life-or-death situations, checklists lead to better chance of survival and success. Among many other real examples, he goes into the famous Hudson bay water landing and talks about pilot training in its context. For laypersons, it is easy to miss the power of checklists. This book brings it home!

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

Bill Gates is a brilliant man and is well read. He has decided to apply his brain and his fortune to the worlds toughest human problems. One such problem is climate change. In this book, he splits the problem down arithmetic lines. What are the 7 or so biggest contributors to climate change and what are the capitalist industrial life forces of those contributors. For example, cement, concrete and steel used in construction contribute a certain percentage to climate change. So, what are the factors here? How can we replace cement? What materials exist? Another example is much more obvious - fossil fuels. How do we replace that? He has gone into a business like analyses of these topics and described some potential ways to tackle the problem. He is so business like in this book that he side steps some issues such as animal farming, social habits and public opinion. On the contrary, I feel like he somewhat trivializes the activism that calls for massive changes in the human diet. He may be right from a dollar arithmetic point of view, but I think he is being unfair to simply dismiss the idea that changing the human diet from meat to plant based or lab grown meat 100% could be great for the climate.

Drug Use for Grown Ups

This was a phenomenal book. First of all, I had no idea (until I read this book) that the US Government has an entire agency dedicated to drug abuse named NIDA (National Institute of Drug Abuse). How we had a national crisis on opioid addiction despite having this agency is beyond me. When I picked up this book, I thought this was going to be a fringe book filled with opinions and anecdotes. I thought so because there is no way to get evidence based literature on an illegal activity. I was pleased to find out that NIDA existed and this author was a senior scientist there. The book itself is great! He has written about all drug types from Marijuana, Meth, MDMA (Molly/Ecstasy), Opioids (Oxy, Heroine), Acid/PCP and many others that I have now forgotten. Not only has he conducted scientific research on subjects in his lab, but also on his own body. He asks all drug users to not only come out of the "closet" but also proudly claim actively that they do drugs. He is himself an active drug user and is telling everyone about it. The book assumes that everyone knows how many problems we have today due to unjust drug laws and Nancy Regan policies. It just goes into a great, in-depth explanation of each drug type and how or why none of these drugs are truly unsafe. One caveat is that Drug Use is only for "Grown Ups". That means, the consumer should be in good physical and emotional health, should be using drugs for recreational purposes only. Kids are not included! I should mention that this book is deep and broad, please read it. You will be surprised.

Invent and Wander

Have you read all of Jeff Bezos' shareholder letters since 1997? Me neither! So, this book contains all those letters and a few of his important speeches. What stood out to me is that Jeff Bezos did not just build a website, he has invented a new way of doing business. It is surprising to see how much business innovation he produced and how he defined his metrics over time. Other than being a single unconstrained dump of all his letters, this books is not much else. I don't mean it is insignificant - far from it - instead I am saying it is a book worth reading for any student of 21st century digital businesses.

No Filter: Instagram

This was a great book. Mainly, it is very well written as a narrative non fiction. It reminded me of a book I read long ago about Anheuser Busch titled Dethroning the King. It was unputdownable. It starts from Kevin Systrom's dorm days and ends with how Instagram influencers now rule the digital marketing world. The authoress takes the reader deep into the minds of Instagram founders, employees, their community leaders, moderators, early artists and then leads the reader deep into how Facebook and Zuckerberg think of Instagram. I found the book fascinating.

Culture Map

Culture Map is a deep dive into the background of a book I read last year. That one was about netflix - co-authored by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer. This book is by Erin Meyer and it describes in detail how cultures across the globe differ and what a global manager must do to make a multi-national organization effective. I have seen first hand how multi-national organizations work. I always felt that there is just no way to plan for cultural differences other than simply wing it or stumble through it. This book provides a great framework to thinking about this problem. This book applies mainly to work culture and productivity. In some chapters, I found the authoress digressing into longs anecdotes or stories of personal experience, but, it all makes the point that she has written about. I cannot imagine how thick and slow the book would have been without her anecdotes and experiences.

Enjoy reading!