Life in Balance: Amit Chaudhary’s Blog
• • • • •

Highlights from The Way I Work: Paul English, Co-founder Kayak

• Up everyday at 6:00, Email & then Yoga. Has a meditation room.

• We work really hard for 40 to 45 hours a week, but we believe in people having strong personal lives. Over the past six years, there have been maybe five times I’ve spoken with Steve before 8 a.m., after 5 p.m., or on the weekend.

• Always drives kid to school.

• We have offices in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and California. We started with the first two because my co-founder, Steve Hafner, lives in Connecticut, I live in Boston, and neither one of us wanted to move.

• We have an open office environment. our general philosophy is that an open environment facilitates intellectual intensity. Most engineers are introverted. Here, when people overhear a discussion, we encourage them to walk over and say, “There’s another way to do that.”

• The engineers and I handle customer support. If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they’ll actually stop what they’re doing and fix the code. Then we don’t have those questions anymore.

• Real time datamining and support information. We have four monitors in the office where you can see real-time streaming information about the site — how many visitors, how many click throughs. It also displays the last customer e-mail that came in and the photo of the employee who answered it. So you’re walking by and you see, “Oh, Dan just answered a question.” We developed our own customer support software. One of the things it does is randomly select an employee response to a customer and send that response out to the entire company and to all of our investors each day. It keeps us on our toes.

• I keep noon to 2 p.m. open, because I like going out to lunch. It’s also a time for me to socialize. We have a very active work force.

• I do all of the firing. At times, I’ve fired maybe one out of every three people I’ve hired. That might make people think I’m bad at hiring, but I think I’m quite good at hiring. The only way 100 people can ever build a larger company than one that has more than 8,000 people — that’s what Expedia has — is by hiring Olympic-quality, unbelievable all stars of technology.

• Every Tuesday night, I have an open dinner at my house. Anywhere between four and 15 of my relatives will show up for dinner. I’m not a great cook, but it’s fun to have people over.

• I read for an hour every night before going to bed. I love reading books by Indian authors. I’ll also read books about global health and Africa, as well as a murder mystery now and then. But I don’t like business books. There are so many things in life that are more interesting than business.

Recently during my Yoga Ashram stay and when visiting in India, I read the Bhagavad Gita, translated by Swami Sivananda. Following are my highlights.

Balanced & Free from pair of opposites
2.45 Free from pair of opposites and acquisition. 2.48 Balanced in success and failure, evenness of mind is called Yoga **
2.50 yoga is skill in action.  **

Meditation
2.66 with no meditation, no peace and hence no joy. 18.50-52. dwelling in solitude, eating but little, with speech (silence), body and mind subdued, always engaged in meditation and concentration, resorting to dispassion. *
5.21. Engaged in meditation, attains endless peace and hapiness. *
5.27. Meditate, looking inwards. Equalize incoming and outgoing breath.**
6.10 Constant practice of meditation, in solitude.* *
6.14. Meditation steps incl sitting neither high or low.
6.15. Moderation. In eating, actions and sleep.
6.25. Little by little, quiet comes to the mind.*
6.26. Whenever mind wanders, bring it back under control.*
8.10. Fix whole life breath in the middle of eyebrows. **
8.12. Withdraw senses, gazing inwards, focusing.
8.13. Uttering OM and remembering me. **
12.8-10. Otherwise focus on me, practice Yoga constantly or do actions for my sake and you will reach siddhi (me). *
12.12. Knowledge is better than Practice. Meditation is next. Then renunciation of fruits of action. Then peace follows.**

Yoga, Pranayama & other practices
4.28, 29, 30. Yoga, Pranayama (equal breath for in & out) and moderate diet as tapas.**
4.38. Perfection in Yoga leads to knowledge within self in time.
6.40-44. A former Yogi eventually returns to his practice.
6.44. Who merely wishes to know Yoga goes beyond the written word of Brahman.*
17.6. Senseless austerities and torture of body and thereby me, are of demoniacal resolve.

Sense control, Pratyahara
3.6. Control senses during action.*
3.37. Desire leads to Anger. It is the Foe. Both in turn lead to Sin.
3.40. Desire sits in senses, mind and intellect, clouding wisdom.*
3.41. Hence control senses.
5.20. For Brahman knower, No joy from pleasant events, no agitation on unpleasant.*
12.15. He by whom the world is not agitated and who cannot be agitated by the world is dear to me.**
12.17. He who is not attached to good and evil, who is full of devotion is dear to me.*
12.19. He to whom censure and praise are equal, who is silence oriented, homeless is dear to me. *

Conduct, Actions & Gunas (Qualities)
2.42 flowery speeches by unwise *
3.5. Action always happens due to our nature. Swayed by gunas.*
3.25. Do actions without attachment for welfare of world.*
3.27. All actions due to nature. Delusion to think I am doer.
3.42. Senses are greater than Body. Mind > Senses. Intellect > Mind. The Self, the Witness, He > Intellect.**
9.1. To you who is not jealous, I will give knowledge which combined with experience will set you free. **
12.8-10. Otherwise focus on me, practice Yoga constantly or do actions for my sake and you will reach siddhi (me). *
12.12. Knowledge is better than Practice. Meditation is next. Then renunciation of fruits of action. Then peace follows.**
14.5. Sattva, Rajas and Tamas, these qualities, born of nature, bind fast in the body, the undestructable.
14.6. Sattva, which is stainless, binds by attachment to knowledge and happiness. Comparing to others.*
14.10. Each of these dominant at different times.*
14.11. When light shines through every gate in the body, Sattva is predominant.
14.22. When one transcends the three qualities, he is neither carried away nor upset when any of the gunas is dominant.
17.8-10. Food which increase life are dear to sattvic, excessive hot to rajasic and stale to tamasic.
18.48. All undertakings have some fault as fire has smoke.*

God in all, Universe    
4.35. With truth, see all beings in yourself and in me.**
5.16. Ignorance is destroyed by knowledge of self, sheding light on the highest knowledge.*
9.4. All this world is pervaded by me in my unmanifested form. *
9.6. As the wind rests in the sky, all beings rest in God. *

Devotion
7. 22. Whatever one seeks with devotion is given.*
17.3. As a man’s faith, so is he.*
17.23. Om Tat Sat, is declared to be triple designation of Brahman.
17.24. Therefore, Om is uttered by Brahman students before Tapas and Charity.

I came across a very interesting podcast (basically mp3 files recorded by an Author or company) covering Health, Weight loss, Exercise, Motivation, Stress control, Visualization and Personal Development. It has been a revelation and I recommend you try it.
Inside Out Weight Loss: Aligning Mind, Body and Spirit for Lasting Change by Renee Stephens

Caveat: One has to be patient as it has ads and Renee has a slow pace.

Here are a few gems:

-Set a goal everyday. Small or big. From Melinda Gates. Renee’s inside out weight loss, #19: Success journal

 -My journey to health is with ease and enjoyment. Visualize the journey, not just the destination. Renee’s inside out weight loss.

-Move from saying and thinking I am tired, to expanding it. Feel it and say I am sleepy, I have pain, I am hungry. These are steps to awareness and what needs to be done. Renee’s inside out weight loss. Simple Snoozing techniques #1

I heard the audio version of the Book: Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It by David F. D’Alessandro recently. Following are notes from it.

Short Summary: It is a book on how to climb the career ladder while handling the hurdles and opportunities. The author covers anecdotes from his experience, making it even more interesting. For anyone in the work environment, I would rate it a 4/5.

Notes (They are from last chapter to first):

-Do not stop being a contender. Aka keep your edge from ages 30-60:
1. Don’t be a generic, be a Tylenol. Fear and sluggishness will settle in.
2. Get back on the horse. Go for the promotion.
3. Ask for a promotion. Never punch it at work.
4. Do not settle for cheap such as 5 percent rise, a better health plan. Field job with no raise, so they can come back. Latter you will make up more than this.
5. Moments of importance will happen, hard to control. Use the ones which are opportunities. Be ready and plan for them
6. Gamble shrewdly. Take risks, particularly department goals. No new job every 2-3 years.
7. Create a brain trust.
8. Tinker with success. Try to explain the reasons why.
9. Do not cross the lines of integrity.
10. Unexamined reputation is not worth it. Be conscious of what is your reputation.

-What do you want to be said at your retirement party?

-Do not let them see you sweat and you won’t sweat for long. HP CEO Carly fiorina and the proxy battle with Packard family.

-Keep an eye on when the standards have changed. At work, in public.

-Do something that reminds you there is a world outside work. Garden. Travel. Hike.

—-
Be gracious, but pick a fight if needed.
Be aware of your competitors.

It’s always showtime
Be on watch all day. There might be career altering opportunities.

Meetings are the stage where you build your brand. Or show your worst qualities. Use them well.

Work where you are learning and your brand is thriving. Do not get stuck. Note, he has worked at John Hancock for 20 years.

4. Use the pickle fork
-do not embarrass yourself. Toilet VP guy.
-dress well.
-do not judge another person by looks.
-about maintaining tact including at parties.

——
The idea is to learn from a boss, make contacts and grow.

If you stop learning and get lulled into mediocrity, you might end up on your 40s-50s working for someone 10 year younger and wonder what happened.

Types of bosses: patriarch, wimp, mentor, one way, paraiah.

Rule 3: Put your boss on the couch
—–
Rule 2: your mgr is your co-brand.
Your image with his peers is due to your boss.
Hierarchy and credit taken is often the way of corporate career. Get use to it.
Never criticize your boss. Ever.

3 types of employees. Sycophants, Contrarian, Balanced.
—–
Five attributes for success.
-bring company money
-tell the truth.
-keep your promise. Deliver on time.
-be discrete, use information, do not pass it along.
-have people want to work for you. People are your project. Use stick or just sweet talk.
———
-Promotions, decisions happen in a casual environment. Based on your brand and in minutes. What Is the first thing people think when they think of You?

-Rule 1: develop an external perspective to your actions.
Take humble tasks to be noticed by Execs.
Strive to put everyone in a good light.
-Get noticed.
Interesting example of exclusive restaurants. How by putting their reviews, he got access to seats there.
Finally

-Manage your brand. Like a Mercedes you are expensive and are expected a high performance.  

Here is something I have used a few times. Yahoo Research has a TagMaps project, WorldExplorer which shows main tags for any place and pictures.
One can quickly decide what to visit in a place.

Here is an image which shows places in Santa Barbara

And here is an interactive Flash widget for Peru.

One of the researcher behind this is Mor Naaman

Try India and San Francisco, see if you can find Yoga in the Presidio or find out why Machu Pichcu does not show up in Peru.