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.