1 2 3 & 10 minutes!

Getting stuck in an elevator with a beautiful girl has been the part of my fantasy whenever I stepped into an elevator. A beautiful girl in white midi with perfect chiselled features, sharp eye contact....whoa. The train of thought isn’t yet over and what I see next is more fascinating. Don’t know how to handle, what to say and even whether should shut my mouth or let it open, how to even ask for the photo with him. Not that there is no one else but the irony is I am so utterly single to click selfies that I never bothered about having a phone with front cam!

The lady luck of my fantasy is with me today that the lift is stuck, the same lift I engineered before 10 minutes...The same lift into whom SRK ventured while it was about to launch.

Me: Hello, sir!!!

SRK: Hello dude.

I can feel like am at the North Star and my heart is pumping the river of blood, not just the stream.

SRK: O gosh! What happened to this lift! Sigh!!

Me: (with the fear of getting sacked from the job) Helllllllo Sirrr!

SRK: Hello. What happen top this elevator?

That’s the sign of a good actor, it seems. He must have noticed my crumbled expressions and sweat drops on my forehead and has got the hint “This nerd is an engineer”.

Me: (with immense wonder) how do you come to know, sir, that I am an engineer???

SRK: (smiling) that’s on your ID card, dear!

Huh? Embarrassed I thought it’s on the forehead. But he soon comforted me.

SRK: Well, like you Mr. Engineer I am also wondering why is the elevator stuck? What’s your name?

Me: Into...I mean Ishant, sir.

SRK: you look like a typical engineer. You drive the elevator ‘nuts’!

Slight laughter prevailed.

Me: Maybe a bad one...

SRK: But smart enough to have me and the lift stuck.

Amid the stuck elevator, I find myself stuck too. In haste, I dare to offer the handshake.

He reciprocate the same gesture with much warmth in his autograph that literally goaled me!

ASAP, I posted the photo on FB, Twitter and instagram with a status of “being on cloud9”.

Meanwhile, I summarily explained the technicalities of why are we stuck in the elevator. And figured out that it will take around 8 minutes (specifically more accurate than usual) to get out from here.

Me: Can your men supply pizza if you are stuck for longer?

SRK: Have chewing gum. It will delay your appetite. Well pizza! So they can paste me to it and toss up?

Me: Hahaha...What will you prefer to watch football or IPL, if they both are LIVE?

SRK: Football, if you are referring to the WC.

Me: And what if both your favourite teams reach the final? I mean one in football, another in IPL.

SRK: I’ll send you where you would wish to be and watch the other match, sir.

Me: Hahaha... Don’t worry. You can still sort friendship with Aamir and have his tata sky + record set up!

SRK: Haha...

Me: I have never been to the live match. But your energy in stands seems to enlighten the place and where ever you go. What’s the secret?

SRK: Have the passion for your work with “let’s do it” thought. You will find immense energy.

Me: (smiling) Do you feel yourself closer to Allah with your energy?

SRK: Allah, the Almighty, is the energy resource. He created me. It’s His energy that He spreads through me.

Me: (smiling) you know we need energy to put this elevator in motion. But that’s different energy.

And suddenly the jerk puts on the lights and the AC. His men evacuate him and lend help to me too.

He bid “Good bye. See you” and “friend request accepted” message flashed in my phone. It’s he who accepted it.

SRK: Not only energy but my men also work to make your disturb elevator move!!

And the trio moves on...me, SRK and the elevator.

GREAT(!) IDEAS

HOW TO HAVE GREAT(!) IDEAS

Ishant Krishna ‏ @i_ishantkrishna I am confused about the “concept of ideas”. Please  elaborate more on the basics of producing more productive ideas.

ANSWER

I want you to be an idea machine. For the past 20 years all I’ve done is come up with ideas. Most of them bad, horrible. Ugly, stupid. I got thrown out of graduate school for having too many bad ideas. I wrote four unpublished novels. I’ve had 20 businesses in a row fail on me.

I lost the first home I bought. I lost all my money. Fifteen million cash. I went to zero. I was literally crying on the floor while my baby was crawling over to me to get to her toys. I couldn’t get a loan of a few hundred dollars just to ensure I could provide diapers and food for the weekend. From my own parents! Nobody trusted me.

But WHENEVER I’ve been stuck on the floor I knew the only way to kick into action was to start building my idea muscle again. Because it is in those moments that my brain had become smaller, damaged, and my idea muscle had atrophied. And from that moment it takes six months (on average) to 100% change my life around.

If you were sick in bed for ten days and then tried to walk you wouldn’t be able to. How come? Because your leg muscles have atrophied. Just two weeks of non-use and you might need six months of therapy to walk normally again.

We’re in a world that is running 1000 miles per hour. If you let your leg muscles atrophy you will get left behind.

The idea muscles in your mind are the EXACT same way. They atrophy in about ten days of non-use.

STEP 1: WRITE A LIST EVERY DAY OF IDEAS

So start now, every day list 10 ideas. I make a list every day. It can be a list on anything. Today I did a list of 10 kindle singles I can write. One of them I will pick and do within the next 2-3 weeks.

The other day I did a list of ideas I could maybe use as standup material.

The day before that I did a list of 5 Ways in which Procrastination is Great.

In my first successful business, Reset, I would come up with 10 ideas a day for each of my clients. Ideas that could help them improve their websites.

In my business, Stockpickr, I would come up with at least 10 new ideas for features every day.

(i have 100s of waiters pads lying around with ideas listed from the past 20 years)

When I was running my fund of funds I would come up with 10 ideas a day to get new clients.

Other days I make list of businesses I can start. And some days I make list of features that can be added to businesses I’ve already started. Or blog post ideas. I have 80 blog posts in my Drafts folders as a result. Most of them have good lists but I’m not satisfied with the writing yet.

So what happens after a year: you have 3650 ideas. Out of those maybe one or two might be decent.

BUT, the more you do it, the better the muscle is. Then people will start saying, “Man, you are an IDEA MACHINE!”

I want you to be an idea machine. I really want it for selfish reasons. I need some help on something. Once you are ready you can give me ideas on where this blog is going.

STEP 2: WHAT IS AN IDEA? An idea is not just “I will start an airline for outerspace”. That may or may not be a good idea. An idea is a tuplet. It looks like this:

[idea, spec of the whole idea, next step to execute, timeline]

So, for instance, if I have an idea for a Kindle Single it might look like

["I am Running for Vice-President" kindle single, (then I list the table of contents), expand these 5 blog posts and then write X,Y,Z original material, download the kindle single guidelines from Amazon and then put the text in the right format and upload to Amazon, I can work on it for 3 hours a day and be done by next week]

THAT is a full idea. Write ten of those.

STEP 3: IDEAS HAVE SEX JUST LIKE PEOPLE DO. AND ITS VERY PORNOGRAPHIC

I bet you didn’t know that ideas have sex. And they have children.

The more ideas you have running around in your little rabbit cage, the more rabbits you will get. And generations evolve fast. When I started Stockpickr it was the mating of my ideas on the Internet with my ideas for a new hedge fund. The best ideas always come from mating. Think of Hollywood. When they pitch an idea its never just “I have this idea”. Its always “It’s “James Bond” meets “the Titanic” ”

Hollywood pitches are all about mating ideas. Ditto for Silicon Valley pitches. Ditto for any pitch. Why can’t people say, “its like James Bond”. Because James Bond has already been done. But when you says “its like X +Y”  then people all lean back and their beautiful imaginations begin to dance with your idea. What does it look like when you mate X and Y. Its IDEA PORNOGRAPHY! Its art. Its beauty.

(the art of Steampunk is a beautiful mating of ideas)

Let’s look at Google! The best company in the world.

Google came from ideas in search (which was a failing industry at the time) mating with ideas about what makes scientific research papers important (how many citations from other papers refer to a paper). These were totally separate ideas that had never been mated before. And guess who came up with the idea? Did you just think Larry Page!? WRONG! Did you think Robin Li, who started Baidu? Then yes! But he was working at Dow Jones at the time who couldn’t figure out what to do with his idea. So he left the one company that reports on capitalism, he left the most capitalist country in the world for the most communist country, and set up his company there.

How come? Because ideas have no geographic boundaries.

STEP FOUR: PASSION

You can have a one night stand. But if you don’t have true passion for an idea you’ll never get married and have children.

It’s ok to not have passion. You have 3650 ideas per year. If you had passion for each idea I’d say you were an idea slut. Just relax already.

When you have passion here’s what happens:

A) you read everything you can about the history of the idea.

B) you read everything you can about the science of the idea.

C) you build the idea. Now your idea is not just one idea but 100s. It’s a family of ideas. Passion multiplies an idea very quickly. Because every day you are coming up with ten new ideas to make your original idea better. You are coming up with features, design ideas, distribution ideas.

I will give you an example. I have an idea. Every day I’m coming up with ideas to add to the original idea: gamification, voyeurism, distribution, other ways that I can help people with the idea, other groups of people I can help and how, ideas for the UI, ideas to add content, ideas for people I can involve, ideas for partnership. And I read books every day about different aspects of  the idea.

And STILL the idea might not work. But I have passion for it.

What does passion really mean?

It means two things. That you are in love. And also that nobody can beat you. When I started Stockpickr I had passion for it. Some business school students out of Stanford had a similar idea. They lost badly. Because they thought this could be like a school project. You don’t date and marry a beautiful girl because it’s a homework assignment. You do it because you have passion for her and you want to do everything you can to make sure she’s happy.

(I wanted to make a better racquet for Maria but I didn't have the passion)

Another example. A friend of mine had an idea for a new type of tennis racquet. I liked the idea. I bought all sorts of books about the science of making a tennis racquet plus the history of it. And then you know what? I got bored by the fifth date. I lost the passion. So I stopped. And now I have all this useless knowledge in my head of how to build a tennis racquet. But you know? Maybe ten years from now that knowledge will mate with another idea and the Messiah of all ideas could be born.

You never know.

So I am going to tell you what to do right now (a summary of above) and in six months your life will be completely different.

A) eat healthy, sleep a lot, and exercise. Your body needs to have oxygen and blood flowing properly to your brain to come up with ideas.

B) get rid of all negative people. They will turn your ideas into vomit before the words even leave your mouth.

C) make a list of ten ideas per day as described EXACTLY above. Keep track of all your ideas. I have ideas from 2002 I think are good that I still have not implemented yet but I know I will.

D) Be grateful you have this opportunity to come up with ten ideas a day. Say “thanks, world, for letting me do this.”

E) And wait. Be patient. Don’t criticize your ideas. A bad father can produce a beautiful son. Every idea has healthy sperm. Your first few ideas once you start following this post, are like the first few times you had sex (uhhh, if you are anything like me). They usually involve some sort of apology. But at least you are no longer a virgin. Now go forth and multiply!

F) If your ideas require research, then read. Wikipedia is a good start. Never stop reading. But what you read is important. If you read shit then your brain will become malnourished. I will put together a good reading list. But you already know what is good for you and what isn’t.

You are an IDEA MACHINE! An Idea Warrior. Now your body and mind must flourish and you must do all of the above. Then success and dreams will come true. How much time will it take? If you do the above: six months for at least one good idea. Six months and your life will be completely different. Give yourself about 3-5 years to get rich. But never be upset about the pace.

You are the idea warrior, about to conquer great worlds and kingdoms in other dimensions other than this meager and petty one. I am envious of the adventure you will embark on. Because it will be exciting and the first time you realize that ideas that spring out of your head are actually helping people will be the best moment in your life. I know because I’ve been there. And I’m never going to stop.

THANKS JAMES ALTUCHER FOR THE MENTION AND THE EFFICIENT SUGGESTION.

Just like that

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKE JACK A DULL BOY.

Wat lazy?????

I  have been under a lot of work load since my parents pleasured themselves wid d most arrogant n unstoppable form of love-SEX…………

The first fight that  I had 2 win 2 b born was wid my would b brothers,sisters & neuters. Out of the sets of 23 chromosomes of my mother & father, the chances of my birth were just 0.000000000000000000000000000000004789164687 but thank God for bringing an idiot into this world.

 With the fury voice, came in a lady ,who participated in the event of bringing me to this world wid a guy known as her husband, my sweetest mummaaaaaaaaaa……….. she had instructed me like a doctor 2 consult a doctor. But like d most undesirable patient, I was refusing her words only until before this time. She was well aware of my common sayings and this time she was creative enough 2 carry me 2 the doctor in the not so nice dress 2 b in, in this age. Well I wore big old capry alongwid a pokemon T, which was mumma’s favourite but I would hv hated d creator of pokemon even she would b d most beautiful girl of the universe. Bt gud girls can’t do bad things. That’s my trust. Being an engineer, my brain can b taken 2 work like an engine. The reason 4 hating the word pokemon was mumma used 2 call me with this metaphor since I was 6 bcoz I was an excellent excretor of that time and appeared 2 love toilet more than any other place.

 Well my meeting with the doctor  was good but I was suspecting him of  taking bribe from my mumma, just for suggesting me a 6 weeks break from my work. He was continuously adding more sugar 2 the saturated solution.

 Doc-Dear, you are suffering from the most common disease of work overload. So recommend you 2 go for holidays 2 any place which is known for its’ vicinity 2 d nature like Kashmir, Shimla, Kerala etc.

 I was very keen 2 get out of this hell clinic and wished for the doctors’ CLINIC ALL CLEAR! Also, doctor roaming around my house 2 let him assist my servant in her work.

 Me- Don’t take fucking advice….. Oops!! Sorry!! Advice carefully. There are a lot of medicines available in the market, they work for others, they’ll work for me too but only if I take them. That fuc…. Oh no!! Sorry again, doctor forgot the name of such medicines and hence just 2 keep his head high, he gave us such an advice.

 My words were going like the bows flow in the show based ion Hindu epic “Mahabharata”.

 Mumma- Take me to the travel agent or let me go….(The later option is always undesirable and action provoking for a good son like me).

 Now my tickets 2 Kashmir were booked and I had submitted the medical prescription of the doctor. This is the most usual way of taking leaves in my office.

 On the airport, my mumma came alongwid my father and my darling girlfrnd. I was expecting my mumma 2 stop me from going in the filmy style. But……….