Manoj's Review on Books

Going through Karan’s career journey, it’s clear that he is someone with an exceptional energy level and always needed a place to expand, a sense of comfort seems to give him restlessness. Given Karan’s insane risk-taking appetite, his story should ideally not trigger a content individual on a pre-defined corporate ladder. With that caveat setup upfront, let me provide an overview of Karan’s freedom manifesto. The book is divided into two parts, the first one deals with a framework on how to position oneself for the entrepreneurship journey. He provides formula for the amount of corpus fund required to sustain a desirable lifestyle, investing rules that provides a broad structure to breakup income towards needs and experience based expense bucket while the rest gets into savings bucket, 1:1:1 daily process of dedicating 3 hours of life to self-improvement focusing on exercise, meditation and reflection and a broad understanding into which business idea provides maximum impact. It’s...

For millennium before the mid 19th century, every great captain lost himself in the middle of sea despite the best of charts and compass, eventually leading to heavy loss of life, commodities and in many cases shipwrecks.  There has been hundreds of shipwrecks causing thousands of men ranging from sailors, civilians and warriors who had lost their life in mid sea not having a clue about their whereabouts. It’s one of the prime reasons why many voyagers landed in completely different geographic landmass, the problem of an unclear longitude. Deep sea or oceans brings with it extreme variances of temperature which caused the lubricating oil within the clocks to thicken or thin down the volume along with expansion or contraction of various components within the clock. It meant that the time shown in clocks became unreliable with differences ranging for a few hours ahead or behind the actual time, mostly not even knowing whether the error in time difference is positive or negative. No...

A curious title indeed and it pays to understand the meaning before getting to know the depth of it. When breath becomes the central focus of one’s existence and the subject is in the act of dying, it’s termed as breath becomes air. When every human takes breath as an undeniably granted component of their life, the same act had become central point of attention for over 22 months ever since Paul was diagnosed of lung cancer, an aspiring neurosurgeon just in his mid-thirties but a career that he has dedicated himself for over decade. Any surgery related to brain tumour is bound to be complex not just due the significance of the organ but more so due the life and death related outcomes. When prognosis becomes a function of probabilities added with uncertain elements in the mix, the exercise is a share of not just medical expertise but moral dilemma as well. Would you rather live with the pain of tumour than accept the radical change in personality post-surgery? Is death a preferrable o...

As I was reading through Morgan’s 'Same as Ever' book, it reminded me of the great tamil philosopher Thiruvalluvar’s 1330 verses that remains true till date having withstood over two millenniums of human civilization and progress. Though Morgan’s score of tiny stories doesn’t cover the depth of human emotions as it does with Thirukural, the fundamental idea remains the same.    There are infinite number of ways that your life could potentially play out while any individual seems to be living just a single version of it. The leading question is what would be true in every imaginable version of your life, the universal truth that transcends beyond luck or chance. Having said that, let’s look at chance event that occurred on 28 th of August 1776, the battle of long island which marks itself as a significant day in the history of America. George Washington’s 10,000 troop army was battered by British through it’s fleet of 400 war ships. All that British army had to do was to s...

A simple lovable girl, an adorable father who has a scientific inclination, a geneticist husband who carries a disturbing past and most importantly a genetically modified advanced foetus with supernatural powers. With the combination of given characters, Nidhi crafts a beautiful storyline centred around Mahika and Shivam. The story starts with Mahika falling for a charming and aspirational geneticist Shivam, whose presence and touch cast an endearing experience within her. She longed for Shivam’s presence and voice during the initial days when he was a bright research assistant to her father, prof. Mishra.   The mutual attraction gets them married in the course of time and the couple shift to New Jersey to advance Shivam’s career prospects despite Mahika’s eagerness to stay close to her father. She undergoes a mixed emotion of the joy of experiencing a new place and the sadness of staying away from her father. As years pass by, Mahika begins to witness the rough side of Shivam ...

In a world driven towards specialization, what’s the value created by a generalist in the real world. Jack of all trades but master of none is a statement to undermine the importance of a generalist by projecting them as superficial, however there are enough evidences that showcase them as essential elements to solve complex problems purely by them function of breath, which is what David Epstein terms as range. There are critical questions that David tries to answer, Does one need to narrow down early in his career and specialize? Are experts able to solve all the problems related to their field? If so, why do you need organizations like Wazoku crowd which flags unsolved industry related problems with the expectation that someone from the public can solve it. Are we expected to experience kind or wicked environments through the course of our lifetimes?   If it’s a kind environment, can’t AI perform better than humans? As a toddler, Tiger Woods exhibited enormous talent wh...

The ebbs and flows of life does derail a majority of us off the track and diametrically shifts the direction of thought, mostly for the worse. Within the said context, it helps a lot when we have the tools to discard unresourceful thoughts mixed with deep emotions and replace them with resourceful ones, needless to say that it’s an ongoing and dynamic process. Let’s start with the most defining component of our lives which is termed as perception. “There is no such thing as reality, only a perception of reality” stated by an renowned Indian-American author, Deepak Chopra. It means that an event occurs due to a combination of blocks that we are able to perceive while subliminal ones are not even factored. Another person can bring up an alternate point of view which can totally shift the perception of reality. Should we admire at the depth of dimensions or rue at the limitation of human senses? When we follow it up by what Sadhguru states, we get a broad picture of perception. He say...

The Importance of being Earnest is a farcical comedy play staged during the fag end of 19 th century, it’s set up against the cultural backdrop of London. Apparently, Oscar Wilde has produced three other successful plays which led to another resounding play centered around the fictitious character Earnest. Six key characters drive the entire storyline – Jack Worthing and Algernon who are men in the age of finding a spouse for themselves, Augusta who is probably in her fifties bound with the culture of her era, an attractive women Gwendolen, pretty teenager Cecily and mistress Prism. There are few more characters involved but they play minor role across the scenes. Jack and Algernon misrepresent themselves as Ernest to woe their respective sweethearts. To their delight both the ladies fall in love with their prospective partner assuming them to have been christened Earnest. The situation takes a deadly turn as both the ladies unexpectedly meet each other exposing the fictitious cha...

Concentration camp (1939-45) in Auschwitz which is in the southern part of Poland highlights the devilish nature of mankind. A quick look at the numbers will elucidate the trauma each of the captured civilians, prisoners of war or jews had to undergo. A total of 1.3 million who belonged to the non-German creed were captured, out of which 1.1 million were murdered in the concentration camp. This would give an inmate roughly 1/10 th of a chance to survive the brutal treatment met out to them. Under the influence of concentration camp, which disregarded the value of human life and made each inmate an object of extermination. The only reason a Schutzstaffel guard left a prisoner alive was to extract every ounce of physical resource in each of them. With the given background, every prisoner lost his sense of being an individual and identified himself as a part of the pack, regressing to an animal form of life which can be herded around. In short, the man has retreated himself to a primit...

Cognitive error is a failure to think clearly under various conditions which is widespread amongst learned, intellectual or regular section of people. Rolf Dobelli has elucidated 99 of such scenarios wherein irrational side of human behaviour is exhibited. There isn’t a specific flow to the narrative but the idea is around picking different scenarios wherein we are easily lead to an irrational decision. I have highlighted a bunch of interesting bias Survivorship Bias – People overestimate the chance of success and negate super significant failure rate. Setting out to become movie stars, starting a new firm or path towards national team selection has a significant error in misjudgment on their chance of succeeding. The failure rate of start up is 90% and 10% of them don't even survive a single year in business. External Illusion – Models are signed up for cosmetics ads because they score highly on beauty aspect and didn’t attain the same through cosmetics. However, the viewers...

One of the most engaging books I have read till date, goes to show how much the attention of the audience can be grabbed when there is a clear sense of why. Simon Sinek’s premise of the entire book is to have a consistent long-term purpose towards business initiatives, which is what he has repeatedly been calling out as start with why. The fulcrum of the narrative is to start an engagement with a strong sense of why while the how and what aspect should emerge as a tangible proof of what the organization believes in, which is coined as the golden circle. Samuel Langley, a  professor of Smithsonian  institution, inventor of bolometer, a renowned individual who tasted success for his proof of concept on objects that could fly short distance way back in 1900’s. The US government realized the potential and funded him 50,000 USD which could easily measure up to 50 million USD in current valuation, Langley hired the best talent in the country and got the attention of press as well. P...

The bus picked me up at 11:20 pm at Banashankari bus stop and stopped in a few more places to pick the remaining trekkers. In about an hour, I was surprised that a 50 seater bus was full with youngsters, the broad age range would well be within 18 to 24 years and the enthusiasm was evident. Once the last section of trekkers were picked, the back row group started playing music using their Bluetooth devices and voiced over the songs which were predominantly in Hindi. The songs were sung in loud fashion until the bus stopped for refreshments 2.5 hours latter and the group was truly living up to the back benchers tag. Am 39 years of age as I write this blog, may well be the oldest in the group and it has been a long time since I experienced such high energy amongst a group of people. The trek started at 4 am from Skandagiri base point and I was leading with the guide for a significant portion of the trek. About 20 minutes into the trek, I could sense it was tough and scale of difficulty w...

Oscar Trimboli is the host of Apple podcast Deep listening which covers over 100 episodes with a wide selection of personas focussed on listening attribute. He has created an ambassador community on deep listening and is the author of a couple more books, Deep Listening – Impact beyond words and Breakthroughs: How to Confront Assumptions. The introduction for Oscar makes it clear that he wants to make extensive use of his ears than mouth. We as humans are also biologically structured with a couple of ears but a single mouth giving us indications towards the proportion on how much we should be inclined to listen versus speak. Oscar has interviewed over 2000 participants to break down the components of what gets communicated by the speaker and how does one extract true meaning from it.   He throws in an interesting number towards this process, an average human can think 900 words per minute, hear 400 words per minutes and speak 125 words per minute. It essentially means...

Is a long youthful life possible? Can ageing be arrested or even reversed? Can we truly desire for an immortal life? A few deep questions that can have significant impact on the human population at large if it’s proved to be possible. David Sinclair believes to have found the secret sauce to counter aging and live a long life of vitality. A quick look on David’s qualification will bring in semblance of credibility on the outcome attained through decades of research, he has a Phd in molecular genetics, postdoctoral researcher at M.I.T. and held the position of co-director in Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School. He starts of his book with an extremely bold statement, 'aging is a disease'. It took some time to realize the gravity of the statement since for millenniums of human existence, we are taught to believe aging as a natural progression of life. However, the fundamental belief is set to change if David’s research outputs are proved ...

It looks like Ernest Hemingway has an inclination towards anti-climax stories, something that can leave the reader with a heavy heart.  I was wondering what’s the message in the end, isn’t it not a futile exercise to be beaten down every time despite the hard attempt? An old man skilled in deep sea fishing, has been running on dry luck for over 80 days. His neighbouring fishermen are able to get good catches every few days but the old man’s dry days in the sea looked never ending. As being the case, he becomes a ridicule amongst the fishermen community and gets labelled as someone who will never be able to catch any fish. However, the old man keeps his hope intact and ventures into the deep sea for his next attempt. On this attempt, he happens to catch the longest sword fish ever to have caught in his community, measuring eighteen feet in length. The fish keeps him in deep sea for 3 days and 2 nights, emerging to the surface a few times to display it’s enormity and size up the ...

Let me start with a bunch of case studies which will showcase the importance EQ carries in our day to day life, the pressing question however is, does it weigh well over the IQ component. A successful advocate known for his compelling arguments and high win percentage towards his clientele gets a tumour detected on his right hemisphere. He undergoes a surgery to get the tumour removed along with a certain portion of amygdala. In theory, it shouldn’t disturb his life a great deal since the primary function of amygdala is towards detection of threat and the subsequent flight or fight response. However, the advocate lost complete sense of decision-making to a point wherein he couldn’t even decide fixing appointment given a choice of dates. His IQ had compelling reasons for and against both the dates which led to an endless indecisive swing between both the dates. With just a small portion of EQ removed, IQ proves to be useless. Let's take the case of Bell labs, which is world’s re...