2021 Week 23 Update

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GG & BB had their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine this week. Though both Pfizer and Moderna are available in Singapore, both got the Pfizer vaccine because they are below 18 years old and Moderna is available only to those 18 and above. Other than a slight pain in the arm where he was vaccinated for about a day, BB had no side effects. GG on the other hand, had pain for a couple of days and also her arm seemed to be slightly swollen.

Singapore has started easing out restrictions and now up to five people can visit and go out together from the two during the heightened alert period. From 20-30 cases a day, we have come back to single digit cases. Even India has started seeing a drop in the daily case count, but a couple of days back recorded a daily high of deaths attributed to Covid.

This week’s quote comes from the motivational speaker, Tony Robbins who said that life is a gift and this gift is a privilege and an opportunity and it is our responsibility to give back to this gift by becoming more than what we are today. That we should strive to become better versions of ourselves everyday is my take away from this quote.

For me, I had a super productive week, both in terms of my writing as well as my steps. I made some changes to my daily routine which I will share once they become more regular and maybe that will help someone else. But that’s material for another blog post.

That is all from my side this week. As always, stay safe, stay masked and get vaccinated as soon as you can.

In My Hands Today…

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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t – James C. Collins

To find the keys to greatness, Collins’s 21-person research team read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. The findings will surprise many readers and, quite frankly, upset others.

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world’s greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:
Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.

The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.

A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.

The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

Recipes: Hearty Vegetable Stew

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In another episode of no rice Sunday, I was wondering what to make. I had made soups and some roasted vegetables the last few weeks and wanted something different. I was thinking of making a vegetable stew,but didn’t want to make a Kerala-styled coconut milk one. So I decided to improvise and hope and pray it turned out to be edible!

The recipe turned out to be a cross between a soup and a gravy curry and was so flavourful. It is also very healthy with just a tbsp of oil used in the entire recipe. Another good thing about the recipe is that it is a one-pot recipe and would work beautifully for a slow cooker. It just cooks by itself and you need not sit around, stirring and adding ingredients.

My family loved it and I am blogging about it so I can add it to my reportoire and make it another day.

Hearty Vegetable Soup

Ingredients:

  • 3 medium sized onions, minced
  • 2 carrots, chopped bigger than bite sized
  • 2 potatoes, chopped
  • 1 head of cauliflower, chopped
  • 1 green bell pepper, chopped
  • 1 small cup frozen green peas
  • 3-4 medium sized tomatoes, minced
  • 2 green apples, minced (optional)
  • 1 tsp red chilli powder
  • 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
  • 1 tsp cumin powder
  • 1 tsp coriander powder
  • 1-2 tsp garam masala powder
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 tsp fennel seeds
  • 15 cashew nuts, soaked in hot water for 15-20 minutes
  • 15-20 peanuts, soaked in hot water for 15-20 minutes
  • 1 tbsp oil
  • Salt to taste
  • Water as required

Method:

  • Chop the vegetables into pieces larger than bite-sized. I chopped them roughly into 3/4 to 1 inch pieces. Just make sure all the vegetables, with the exception of the green peas are of roughly the same size. Wash and keep aside.
  • Mince the onions into small, fine pieces. I did this using my food processor which took me seconds as compared to chopping by hand.
  • Heat the oil in a large pan or dutch oven and when the oil warms up, add the cumin seeds and let them splutter. Then add the fennel seeds and stir for a couple of seconds.
  • Now add the onions and stir well and let the onions soften and become translucent.
  • Once the onions are translucent, add the chopped green bell pepper and let it cook for about 3-4 minutes.
  • Then add the dry spices – turmeric powder, red chilli powder, cumin powder and coriander powder and stir well.
  • Now add the other chopped vegetables and stir well so the vegetables are covered with the spices. Cover and cook on a medium flame for about 5 minutes.
  • While this is cooking mince or grate the tomatoes and green apples and keep aside. I again used the food processor and minced both ingredients together.
  • Then add the minced tomatoes and green apple to the vegetables, lower the flame to a medium-low and let it cook till the vegetables are about 80% cooked. You can also add water to the vegetables at this point, because it will become quite thick with all the vegetables.
  • While the vegetables are cooking, blend the cashewnuts and peanuts into a smooth paste. Keep aside.
  • Once the vegetables are about 80% cooked, add the garam masala and the blended cashew-peanut paste and add any seasoning if needed.
  • Let it continue to cook on a low flame till the vegetables are completely cooked and serve hot with some crusty bread.
  • If you plan to make this ahead of time, then you may need to add some water when you heat it up before serving because it will thicken up because of the cashewnuts and peanuts. If you are going to add more water, then you will need to check seasoning also which may become diluted.

In My Hands Today…

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Who Moved My Cheese? – Spencer Johnson

It is the amusing and enlightening story of four characters who live in a maze and look for cheese to nourish them and make them happy. Cheese is a metaphor for what you want to have in life, for example a good job, a loving relationship, money or possessions, health or spiritual peace of mind. The maze is where you look for what you want, perhaps the organisation you work in, or the family or community you live in. The problem is that the cheese keeps moving.

In the story, the characters are faced with unexpected change in their search for the cheese. One of them eventually deals with change successfully and writes what he has learned on the maze walls for you to discover.

Not a Rejection, but a Redirection

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This is a scenario that has probably happened to all of us. We are desperately waiting for an answer for either a dream job or a place in the course we yearn to be in. And then there comes a call or more likely an email that dashes our hopes to the ground – a rejection letter if we are lucky. The more likely scenario is ghosting and then slowly we give up hope. We are despondent and think our world has come to an end.

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Bryant McGill said Rejection is merely a redirection: a course correction to your destiny. And this is true. Failure or rejection is just a delay in our plans, a temporary detour, not the end. It may be very difficult to see it then, but that rejection is a sign from the universe that there is something better waiting. But after some time, we have to get up, dust off the rejection and the pain it caused us and continue doing what we need to do to reach our goal. Rejection teaches us that hard work and tenacity will allow us to reap the ultimate reward.

Rejection forces us to dig deep and clarify our passions. Many times, failure and loss result from a diminished passion and we realise we weren’t as passionate as we first thought. The pruning effect is positive and as we clear your plate a little, we’ll make more room for what excites us and direct our energies toward that and it is clear that focused energy is when we’re most effective.

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Challenges and losses compel us to gather up our resources and develop and uncover skills we didn’t know we had. It gives that jolt of adrenalin to our system which forces us to go beyond what we thought we were capable of. A rejection keeps us in check. There will always be someone who is better than us and deserves what we were hoping to get and a rejection shows us that. It pulls us down and if we are at that point arrogant or too sure of our abilities, that’s the universe telling us no, we aren’t. The rejection then becomes a lesson for us, reminds us to be better the next time round and strive harder. With pain, comes gain and when we are all out to reach a goal, then we should be prepared for rejection, criticism and hate and with each such prick, you start to develop a thick skin, which makes future rejections easier to handle. Rejection also eliminates what doesn’t serve us and we are also allowed to reject something that is not right for us, a sort of reverse rejection.

When faced with a large failure, you see who is there for you. When you hit rock bottom, it is your family and close friends, ones who are there in thick and thin, in sadness and happiness. So you can sieve those who are genuine from the freeloaders when rejection comes calling. During rejection, we can figure out where we are lacking, especially the habits and skills we have not yet acquired which a failure reminds us to go forth and get.

We are all plagued with the superhero syndrome and this becomes harmful when the candle is burning at both ends, drifting toward burnout. It is only when faced with rejection, that you start to learn to ask for help and then realise that asking for help is not a weakness but can be viewed in a positive light.

When we are rejected, we usually go back to the drawing board to take stock and reevaluate what went wrong. This is something that we need to do regularly, but when faced with success, we rarely do that, it’s only failure that compels us to rethink options and who knows the rethink may set us on a new path, something we had not considered previously.

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Lastly, when we are rejected, our successes become sweeter. Value and meaning become heightened in the face of difficulty with the greatest celebrations coming from the toughest battles. When the journey to get to the peak includes getting back on our feet and dusting ourselves off, we’ll be more inclined to stop when we see roses and express a little more gratitude at the finish line.

When we are rejected or we are subject to failures, at that moment, we are so hurt and dejected that it is impossible to see past it. In retrospect, in many cases, failure would be the best thing that could have happened to us. Failure and rejection are what keeps us hungry, motivated, and allows us to shoot for the stars by bettering ourselves for the next opportunity that comes along. In short, the bitterness of every failure adds sweetness to every victory.