It was great to disconnect for a while – for the whole week there was only 2 issues that really needed my attention.   Few got deferred, which I will take note of for future delegation out.  Otherwise – things seem to be in quite a good place.

So, perhaps the reason why I get all these small things coming to me – is because I allow them to.  Or, on a negative site – perhaps when I’m on holidays things don’t move as fast – hence less things to deal with.  Will see.

During the week I read a couple of interesting books.   One book got pretty deep, on a physiological level of ‘stress’ – what is stress, effects on mind/body.  I think in my world the 1000 snowflakes is my definition of stress – many, many things that flood the mind.   Out of to book, came for me a strong inspiration to follow through what I have had on my dream map for some time – and that is meditation.

I started using some of the tools, the technique called Mindfulness – which has got a slight Buddhist slant to it, but is non-dominations.  Quite interesting – watching myself think (think the Matrix ) I could see that my mind is ON, and I mean ON all the time.    I love thinking, analyzing, etc, etc. – and I just don’t shut it down.   Throw in the thousand snowflakes – and it becomes quite easy to see – while after a month in the office – my creativity, drive, direction goes down.  

So, as some people would say ‘you think too much’ – I think this could apply to me – but perhaps not quite in the same way the traditional phrase is designed to be.

So, what does it mean?  Well, it means – that I need to function at a high mental capacity – with room in my cognitive centers to look at creativity, big picture, etc.   Realistically, given my level of responsibility and issues I have to deal with on daily/weekly basis my mind will be default get bogged down.

So, meditation is the tool to ‘clean out the garbage’ in your head.  Get focus, perspective, clarity.   Observing myself I can see that I must use a technique like this to remain in the zone. 

So, having been in the ‘zone’ – somewhat – some things had become clearer for me.  

I had gone through last 9 months and mapped out any ‘mind occupying’ events that would have occurred and that I was still processing in my mind.  Little wild to see that my mind was still busy on those issues in the past – that no longer could be changed.

Stress causes weight gain, so I took a bit of time to correlated my weight fluctuations against perceived stress levels over last 9 months.  Sure enough – periods of high stress resulted in weight gain, lower stress, weight loss.    The stress management book actually describes these physical changes due to stress on the body.  I never quite, quite believed in this so much – but I had gone through the exercise of mapping this to me and it definitely co-related.

Interesting, with more research I found out that Google has been using the Mindfulness technique for its people – and has brought in many of the things I had been learning on my own into their workplace.  So, again, given that I have a lot of respect for Google, and how these guys have done, its not surprising that they use Zen in workplace.   If their people have ‘emptier minds’ – they can us those minds for new things.   Hmmmm…

So, all this is fine and dandy, but now applying this in practice will be the next step.   But, my a engineering mind has received enough ‘proof’ to see that meditation is high value activity.  Before now, I knew this more on a ‘feeling’ level – but this week I was able to convince the left side of my brain – that the right side was right!

So, what did I too with my empty mind?  Well, I though about growth.  Though about managing growth.  Though about simplifying management approach.  Though about makings things more clear and more black/white.  Yes (black/white).  Ie.  You perform and meet your targets you are in, you don’t, you are out.  Not quite that ruthless, but close.   About making things easier for myself to decide on things – so that the more challenging decisions that have to be made later when they are emotionally charged, could be made earlier on a more logical basis (less brain processing required).  Little bit like Technical Trading – you are in and out based on your indicators –you remove emotions from your trading practices.

On the lower level, my shareholder agreement , Employee stock option plan are in drafted.  I will review them next week – and the good news is that this key piece of infrastructure is now coming online.

So, I  feel I’m a little bit smarter and a lot more determined.   The 1000 snowflakes will start to fall when I’m back  in Beijing – and I will have to be mindful.

On personal level, also decided to go into the (black/white) mode of thinking (conscious decision) – another words – I will force things out any ‘grey’ zone into a white/black.   Decision points will be attached to the white and to the black.  They will trigger.  I have had so many things go ‘grey’ for so long, that I can see it has been quite counterproductive.  So, out of the grey and into white or black.   If black means conflict – so be it.