Oura Ring - Best Gadget of 2018
2018 was a huge revelation in terms of something very simple. Sleep. Yes, it is the superpower and luxury that many of us take for granted. It is quite well researched that if you have to improve fitness, the triumvirate sleep-food-exercise plays a key role. All three are extremely important. (If you want to know more about sleep and its value, I highly recommend the book by Matthew Walker. It is simply the best book on this topic.)
I consume a lot of media on my devices. Netflix, Kindle, Instapaper and YouTube are my gateway drug dispensed by my iDevices. Apart from that, my work in a startup has given enough mild anxieties and things to ruminate and ponder about. I have never had trouble in falling sleep in my college days and late twenties. Now I am hovering in my late thirties, my sleep cycle has changed a lot. Long story short, my sleep was disrupted in 2018.
It was Matthew Walker, who gave a big kick in my butt with his book, not literally, on the importance of sleep. I started digging around to invest in my sleep hygiene. It was then I came across Oura ring, through Kevin Rose’s podcast. I use the v2.0 of the ring and it looks like a jewel or an accessory. It doesn’t stand out like the v1.0.
I slide in the ring 15 or 20 minutes before I go to the bed. It is quite unobtrusive and waterproof as well. I fall asleep after playing with my son or reading a book. The magic actually happens when I wake up in the morning.
Oura app gives two main things which are extremely accurate and bang on. It gives a readiness score and a sleep score. It takes multiple factors into consideration (total bedtime, actual sleep time, deep sleep, REM sleep, sleep efficiency, latency and a few other things). I have been using the device for the past 5 months and I see the readiness score being so accurate to my actual ready feeling. It gives a lot of suggestions on ideal bedtime, when to workout hard and when to take the daylight.
The quality and user experience of the devices and the app is top-notch and I dare to say, like the quality of an Apple product.
I agree, a gadget cannot “improve” my sleep. But all the efforts taken on improving the sleep (like Magnesium supplements, Melatonin or SOM Drink) can be quantified, measured and improved in a better way, with the help of a device like this.
Highly recommend it for gadget enthusiasts and fitness nerds interested in improving your sleep quality and hygiene.
On Psychedelics
Drugs, substance abuse, meth, Pink Floyd and Breaking Bad. These were the words that came to my mind when hearing of the word, psychedelics. But this took a completely different turn after I read the book, “How to change your mind”, written by Michael Pollan.
The title may sound cheesy, but believe me, this is one of the best books of this year.
Michael is an excellent writer, whose books and Netflix show about food are best sellers and super hits. He examines from a fresh perspective on the mind altering substances like LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca and few others.
It turns out that unlike other addictive drugs like cocaine, meth, the psilocybin mushrooms and LSD can be of help to a huge segment of people. If used by a trained psychedelic expert, this can really work wonders.
He emphasises on two primary factors in experimenting with this: Set and Settings. Set - refers to the quantity of the substance like a mushroom or LSD. Setting -refers to the environment, mindset with which you are primed and prepared for the session.
Both these factors are primarily important as you can undergo a profound change in the beliefs and world views. For people with mental health issues, it can be a catalyst in recovery. For people with fine mental state, it defragments your brain. You many experience an ego death, a profound moment or come closer to your own self because of this experience.
From Silicon Valley pioneer like Doug Engelbart to best selling science writer like Carlo Rovelli have benefitted out of this experience.
My own challenge for 2019 will be explore more, get in touch with a compatible guide and undergo a psychedelic session. Wish me luck.
10 Lessons in Product Management I Learnt From “Extreme Ownership”
In a Masters in Business podcast, Marc Andreessen recommended “Extreme Ownership” as one of the recent good reads. It codifies the abstract and unspoken best practices of ownership in an elegant manner.
Extreme Ownership is taking full responsibility for every aspect of your life. Every excuse given or any blame made is simply wasteful.
As a product manager at Zarget, high-growth startup, my mission is to:
- Understand what job, a customer is trying to get done
- Ship products or services to get a customer’s job done effectively
Inspired by Tren Griffin’s style, here are my lessons on product management from this excellent book.
Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.
I, as a Product Manager, should make sure that every team member who is contributing to that feature should understand the “why”. The “why” may vary:
If it is a big feature that requires aggressive timelines, I need to explain why it is important and how it affects the overall goals of the company. If it is a minor feature, I need to explain why it is important and what customer pain point it is solving. If it is feature contradicting the assumptions made a few months back, I should explain, why the assumptions were wrong and why it is right now and so on. Failure of communicating the mission or the “why” is a PM’s responsibility and I can never shrug it off.
Check Your Ego
As a PM, I may or may not be a CEO of the product. But if I don’t get well along with a team member, I need to keep my ego in check and ask myself if I’m the problem. Maybe the engineer assumed something completely different and went ahead with implementation. I have a choice. I can throw tantrums about engineer not updating me. Or I can keep my ego aside, put the mission first (product or delivery of feature), talk to the engineer without offending, make her/him understand your situation. I need to remember that as a PM, I need to influence people without authority. So no point in alienating myself from the team.
I should know that more than me, the product or the mission is important. I’m here to help a customer’s job get done. My ego and I need to take a backseat.
Relax. Look around. Make a call.
In a feature demo or a review meeting (or in a crisis ;-) ), a founder or a VP might point out a huge scenario being missed out and in turn that might derail the shipment of the feature. All fingers might be pointing at me. I have a choice. I can argue what were you guys doing in the spec/prototype review phase or blah blah. Or I can be calm, listen, assess the severity, think from the first principles, if that is an edge case or not. If yes, prioritise that to be delivered immediately in the next shipment. If not, go back to the drawing board and address it. Better to be criticised internally than by a competitor or a customer.
Leading up the chain.
It is very tempting to blame my boss for not understanding the problem. May be my boss sets unrealistic timelines or has impossible expectations. I need to own this and lead up the chain, by convincing my boss why that is not possible or unrealistic. My boss’ job is not to make me pathetic. (If I truly have such a boss, I need to own and change my company/team). So I need to treat my boss like a customer, explain or convince. If I am not able to do that, I need to follow the next lesson.
Disagree and commit.
If I disagree with my boss’ or board’s vision or if I am not able to convince why they are wrong, I should simply, commit and give my fullest. I should not be bickering or gossip why this is strategy is shit. I simply need to respect the team, commit and fully co-operate. Remember, the mission is higher than oneself.
Discipline = Freedom.
I can pursue my vices like reading, long walks or movies if I am disciplined in my work. It may be contradictory, but it’s not. If I’m disciplined in writing a spec document by thoroughly thinking through all scenarios upfront, I would not be interrupted by a developer or test engineer during implementation or release. If I’m disciplined enough to adhere to the timeline or communicate status, I will not be having any late night pings or quick calls from boss/teammates interrupting movie or a game.
Cover and move.
I know that “Product Manager” is a cross-functional role. But to be really effective, I need to really help other teams to get helped in my role. A new support engineer might have written something completely wrong about an issue to a customer. If needed, I should jump directly into the conversation and address it to the customer or guide the support engineer. In the future, the support engineer might point out to a scenario missed out in the new feature that an important customer was promised for or why the spec in review might not address a certain segment of customers’ pain point.
Simplify.
I always need to communicate the “why”, clearly but succinctly. But there are times in which a junior team member is overwhelmed with many things in her/his plate, cannot comprehend the “why”. I simply should break down the tasks in whatever way I can and communicate the next steps. I am not a project manager or a technical architect to know the nitty gritty of the “how”. But I can break down the tasks and simplify it as much as possible to get the team member focussed on the mission, which is shipping the feature.
No bad teams. Only bad leaders.
I should take complete ownership for the shipping of the product and get customers’ job done. If there is any mess up by any team member, be it engineering or marketing or design, I should take full responsibility. I should communicate clearly but responsibly. Sometimes loud, sometimes nudge, sometimes even offend. Whatever choice I am making, I need to remember that I have to work with the same team for the next release. If my multiple attempts of being sincere at extreme ownership are falling on the deaf ears of the team or boss, maybe its time for me to look for a new team or company. But this definitely will be a rare scenario.
Prioritize and Execute.
I know this is the basic lesson for a PM but it is worth reinforcing. It is easy to get into the vortex of incremental improvement, which is needed in some scenarios, but I need to be clear on the big problem I am solving. I really need to take steps to move the needle in the key metrics of the product/company, rather than being busy with issues/follow-ups/schlepping.
(The principles of Extreme Ownership are applicable for a parent or just a family member too. But I will save that for later. Thanks for reading.)
Friction As a Form of Privilege
Whenever there is a friction in a process, you need an expert to get things done. Editing digital photos or setting up a smartphone is an expert-intensive thing. There is a famous quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. It is very true. Apart from being magical, it makes it available for more people. Instagram or an iPad can make a grandma to share beautifully retouched pictures.
I had a realisation of this today after I experienced Apple’s AirPods. Give this a thought. Connecting with a bluetooth earphone was a friction-filled process. First, you need to pair it (which as a process will simply fail a grandma’s test). Then you need to switch it on. You need to remember to charge it frequently. If you miss any of these steps, your intent to do any action with that earphone will quickly steam down. Your regular wired earphones always become your go-to device. Because of that you cannot for a walk or move around with ease. To use a bluetooth earphone, you need to be a little bit tech-savvy.
AirPod really smashes these assumptions and makes it a breeze to use. IT REALLY IS MAGIC. It is so simple to pair. Very easy to connect and know the battery status. It really is a delight to use.
Once a technology or product reaches that magic threshold it explodes in growth. Cost of it comes down. Everybody gets access to it.
What are things (product / technology / process) you feel are still in the pre-magic realm for you?
My Experience As a Poll Booth Agent of the Aam Aadmi Party
I volunteered to be a polling agent for Aam Aadmi Party at the Mahadevapura constituency near the Chinnapanahalli Railway Gate (Thanks to Vinodh and Sanjeeth for the inspiration). I was called for an half hour training on what to do as an agent, which YouTube videos I should watch to prepare myself and I was given a document saying that I was representing AAP. I was given a kit with some handouts.
The campaign managers and coordinators of AAP did an amazing job in this. Just look at the pictures below, see level of details and planning that went behind this.
I reached the booth at 5:45 AM and everything was in place. The electronic voting machines were installed, the posters, benches and card boards to secure the EVM area, everything was perfectly done by the Presiding Officer and her colleagues. They must have started their work at 4:30 AM itself.
After enrolling as a polling agent, I had to check with the EVMs are working fine, so the officer conducted a mock poll for me. I had to vote for every candidate (27 candidates in total) 2 times. Every vote takes 10 seconds to register and the officer had to open the ballot after every vote. (It is not very easy to fake a vote unless the presiding officer is hands in glove with you.)
After this long exercise was done, the officer showed me the result of the poll in the control unit. Meanwhile, the polling agents from BJP and Congress also joined me. The officer deleted the results of the mock poll and sealed the machine. I signed a document saying the mock poll was fair and I was satisfied with the EVMs.
Now my job was to sit in the corner with the voters detail and tick-off when the presiding officer tells about the voter who is walking into the booth. I could raise my objection over the identity of a person, if I find it dubious. Everything was going smooth and it was almost 9:30AM so I had to step out of the booth and double up as a desk volunteer 100 meters outside the polling booth along with Sanjeeth.
We wore the AAP topi, opened up our laptop with the voter details PDF and displayed the AAP poster with Balakrishnan’s name on it. The BJP and the Congress workers were surprised at us, as they thought party symbols and flags should not be displayed. (As per EC norms its not allowed to do with 100 meters of the polling booth, but were quite far from the booth)
Many people came to our desk as we could search the PDF based on their name/number and tell the serial number. BJP and Congress both had the listed printed out but it is impossible to search based on name and number as there were 2500 entries in total (two polling booths, so 1250 per booth). Soon, the workers of BJP and Congress, themselves directed people to our booth, as people were quite impatient.
At around 2PM noon, the BJP workers got the banners, flags, caps and a laptop too.
I was really impressed by many people who were enthusiastic about voting. A Muslim lady traveled all the way from Hopefarm to the booth, where I was volunteering to check if her name was in the rolls of this booth, as she has not got the Voter ID card yet. It was the third booth in which she was checking. I directed her to the next booth, as I could not find in the rolls of my booth.
Frequent questions asked to me by the Congress workers and the policemen was: how much do you get paid for being a polling agent from AAP?. My reply to them was the desk, Table Mate, that I was using is my own personal desk and we are all part time volunteers.
When I had stepped out for lunch, one Congress worker asked Sanjeeth, then why do you work if you don’t get paid. I could imagine what would have been the expression in Sanjeeth’s face :-)
A couple came and they were highly enthusiastic too. The lady asked my name is in rolls at my native can I vote from here. I smiled and said no. She again said, “We have Aadhaar Card. Can’t we vote in this booth?”. Then she said, “Don’t we have any process to vote online?”. All I could do was smile back and say not yet.
Hope the election commission makes an effort in next decades for the people to vote online, as we already have embraced the electronic voting technology.
Total number of voters in my polling booth was 1258 and till 5:30PM in the evening the number of voters who turned up was just 632. While people were lamenting and cursing the IT middle class for not turning up for voting in Bangalore, I found something really odd in the voters list. Just a cursory glance through the list I found two duplicate entries. Many entries in the list were of people who have already moved out of Bangalore. I really don’t know whether any cleansing or de-duplication was done on this data. Its worth reading Ashwin Mahesh’s article about this.
At 6:30PM, all the polling agents were called, the total votes polled were shown and in front of us, the machines were disassembled. The control unit and EVMs was kept in a secure box and sealed off. I was given a certificate saying how many votes were polled. Total of 632 votes out of 1258 were casted. 350 were male and 282 were female.
Even though, everything went on smooth and fair inside the polling booth, I was told that the BJP coordinator of that area, slyly stuck some cash into the pocket of the policeman who was manning the booth. I really didn’t know why this happened and what else could a polling agent do to tweak the numbers here.
Apart from the last incident, I had an eventful and tiresome day but I thoroughly enjoyed the role as a polling agent for the AAP. I am mightily impressed by the way AAP people had planned the process and executed it. I sincerely hope they get some share of the power and effect some change in our political process.
Bernard Bate
இன்று காலை கலைஞர் தொலைக்காட்சியில், ரமேஷ் பிரபாவுடன் ஒருவர் அழகான தமிழில் உரையாடிக்கொண்டிருந்தார். பார்க்க வெற்றுநாட்டவர் போல இருந்ததால், அலுவலகம் கிளம்புவதை சற்றே தள்ளிப்போட்டுவிட்டு பார்க்கத்தொடங்க்கினேன். அந்த மனிதர், பெர்னார்ட் பேட் என்ற யேல் பல்கலைக்கழக பேராசிரியர். தமிழின் மேடைப்பேச்சு பற்றியும், திராவிட கட்சிகள் வந்த பிறகு அதில் ஏற்பட்டுள்ள மாற்றங்கள் பற்றியும், மிக அழகான தமிழில் (செந்தமிழ் அல்ல பேச்சுவழக்குதான்), ஆர்வத்தோடு கேட்கத் தூண்டுமாறு உரையாடிக்கொண்டிருந்தார். அவர் சொன்ன கருத்துக்கள் சில:
திராவிடக் கட்சிகள் வந்த பிறகுதான் மேடையில் செந்தமிழில் பேச ஆரம்பித்தனர். மக்களுக்கு சற்றே அந்நியமான இந்த மொழிநடையே அவர்களின் வெற்றிக்கு ஒரு காரணமோ என்றெண்ணும் வகையில் மக்களிடம் மிக வரவேற்பு பெற்றுள்ளது.
டீக்கடை அரசியல் கலாச்சாரம் என்பது, மற்ற நாட்டு மக்களுக்கு மிகவும் புதிதானது, விசித்திரமானது. இங்குள்ள எழுத்தறிவில்லாத மக்கள் பல செய்திகளை, டீக்கடை விவாதம் மூலமாக மட்டு அறிந்து கொண்டுள்ளனர். ஒபாமா பற்றி நுணுக்கமாகவும், சிங்கள இனவாதம் பற்றியும் எழுத-படிக்க தெரியாத ஆட்டோ ஓட்டுநர்கள் கூட, தன்னிடம் ஆர்வத்தோடு விவாதிக்கின்றார்கள் என்று ஆச்சரியப்பட்டார்.
நானோ, ஆங்கில சொற்கள் பலவற்றை தவிர்த்து, சரளமாக பேசும் இவர் மொழிநடையைக்கண்டு வியப்பில் ஆழ்ந்திருந்தேன். இருபது ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்னரே மதுரை வந்து தமிழ் கற்றுக்கொண்டதாகவும், தமிழ் மொழியின் இனிமை தன்னை கவர்ந்தது என்றும் “என் இனிய தமிழ் மக்களே” என்று பாரதிராஜா போல குரல் மாற்றி பேசி, உங்களுக்கு பிடித்த உணவு எது என்ற கேள்விக்கு “ரஜினிகாந்த் ஒரு படத்தில் சொல்வாரே, அது போல “நேத்தி வச்ச மீன்குழம்பு” தான் எனக்கு மிகவும் பிடிக்கும்” என்றெல்லாம் அவர் கதைத்துக்கொண்டிருக்கையில் நான் எதனால் மிகவும் சந்தோஷம் அடைந்தேன் என்று எனக்கே தெரியவில்லை.
இவரைப்பற்றி இணையத்தில் தேடியதில் பல சுவாரஸ்யமான தகவல்கள் கிட்டின. சுந்தர ராமசாமியின் “அடைக்கலம்” , அம்பையின் ”வீட்டின் மூலையில் ஒரு சமையலரை” போன்ற சிறுகதைகளை, ஜாம்பவான் ஏ.கே.ராமானுஜனுடன் இணைந்து மொழிபெயர்த்துள்ளார். ”பண்பாட்டு அசைவுகள்” என்ற அருமையான கட்டுரைத் தொகுப்பு எழுதிய முனைவர். தொ.பரமசிவம் அவர்களின் மற்றொரு நூலான “அறியப்படாத தமிழகம்” தனை ஆங்கிலத்தில் மொழிபெயர்ப்பு செய்துக்கொண்டிருக்கிறார்.
இந்த உரையாடலின் வீடியோ கிடைத்தால் பிறகு பதிவு செய்கிறேன்.
Comments (2)
யாத்ரீகன் 16 years ago · 0 Likes
please do share the video when you come across it
ரவிசங்கர் 15 years ago · 0 Likes
வெளிநாட்டவர்களின் தமிழ்க் காதல், அறிவின் ஆழம் வியக்கத்தக்கது. கண்டிப்பா அந்த நிகழ்படம் கிடைச்சா பதியுங்க http://www.muelangovan.blogspot.com/ தளத்தில் இத்தகைய அறிஞர்களைத் தொடர்ந்து அறிமுகப்படுத்தி வராங்க