Analogy of a balloon to stay inspired in life
When I was newly married I had the habit of calling bunch of my friends over to my house for lunch or dinner over weekends. No drinks, no TV, no cell phones, so no texting or WhatsApping… just plain lunch or dinner, lots of chatting, sometimes antkakshyari… we used to have loads of fun. My mother was staying with us and she was of great help. All three of us were hyper social, so we used to enjoy those days of extended togetherness almost every weekend. My wife used to look forward to the weekends for initial few months, but later I noticed, she panicked a bit each time we talked about hosting such get-togethers. We even had a small tiff once. My wife enjoyed the support of my mother, so soon it became one versus two. Not that my wife needed my mother’s support to win the argument, she intervened nevertheless. I was just pushed to another room with a warning not to open my mouth for the rest of the afternoon. But there was no ban on listening; after a brief gap I overheard a conversation that remained as a guiding principle both at work and at home for rest of my life…
“You rest a bit, let me make some tea for three of us” – my mother was the first to break the silence. I could sense a mentoring session in the offing.
“I had never cooked for so many people so frequently… so I am getting nervous bou” – we address mother as bou in most part of Odisha.
“I think you are doing a small mistake” – notice the word ‘small’ – that is key to make someone listen!
“What mistake bou?”
“You are beginning with a grand plan in mind. So you are getting started with too many dishes in parallel. Your mind is not tuned to parallel processing. You are losing control and getting into rework loops. And by the time friends arrive you are done with only few dishes with more in incomplete stage. You are getting into a panic mode…”
“What should I do then bou?”
“I think there is an easier way. Just target a simple lunch or dinner to begin with. Like, say, just rice, dalma(Odia version of sambar) and one bhaji.”
“That’s all!”
“Yes, that’s all, but that isn’t all if time permits”… “What I mean is if guests have not arrived by the time you are done with those three dishes you can always add one more. Ask me to chop some brinjal as you put the oil pan on the stove. In no time you would have added an appetiser! And one more thing. Desert is one thing that is not served hot. You could prepare it in the morning in-between our tea breaks. That way you could offer a full three course meal to your friends. The whole point is that you start with a bare minimum plan so that your friends would never return hungry, and most importantly, you will derive confidence from the fact that at least basic requirement has been already taken care of and you will not panic…”
“Bou, this looks so simple. There is no reason it won’t work. I will certainly follow your words next time…”
The hot tea certainly felt special that afternoon…
Just overhearing this mentoring conversation gave me a life lesson for the rest of my life. Each time we invited some guests for dinner or we planned for a large scale party we would plan a simple meal to begin with and then plan on expanding it to suit the occasion, budget and mood, but never the other way around of getting started with a grand plan and scaling it down by forcing ourselves into a panic mode.
The lesson influenced my style at work. I explain this principle to my colleagues with the analogy of blowing balloons in a birthday party. You just blow one balloon, your child will be happy, because it is a complete display by itself. You try another balloon. Blow it a bit bigger. If it bursts your child will be a bit sad, but would still giggle. You at least know how big you can blow the next one. Keep blowing balloons to their maximum sizes, as many as you could to make the entire experience as majestic as possible. But the whole point is you can stop anytime you run out of time, or budget, and still not feel that you fell short of a ‘complete experience’.
That is how a home is built. You begin with a small living room where you can hang out, add a small kitchen to cook, and if you can afford a separate bed room go for it. Then if you have money and space add more bed rooms, else still feel happy and content with what you have.
That is how we wrote complex computer programs. We first wrote a program to compare two numbers and find out the larger number between the two. Then we added one more number to increase complexity and learning. Then we learnt the concept of adding subroutines. The key is, at each stages of our learning we were getting the experience and ‘kick’ from writing a complete computer program that compiled, was bug free, and gave correct output… much like the thrill of blowing one balloon…
“You rest a bit, let me make some tea for three of us” – my mother was the first to break the silence. I could sense a mentoring session in the offing.
“I had never cooked for so many people so frequently… so I am getting nervous bou” – we address mother as bou in most part of Odisha.
“I think you are doing a small mistake” – notice the word ‘small’ – that is key to make someone listen!
“What mistake bou?”
“You are beginning with a grand plan in mind. So you are getting started with too many dishes in parallel. Your mind is not tuned to parallel processing. You are losing control and getting into rework loops. And by the time friends arrive you are done with only few dishes with more in incomplete stage. You are getting into a panic mode…”
“What should I do then bou?”
“I think there is an easier way. Just target a simple lunch or dinner to begin with. Like, say, just rice, dalma(Odia version of sambar) and one bhaji.”
“That’s all!”
“Yes, that’s all, but that isn’t all if time permits”… “What I mean is if guests have not arrived by the time you are done with those three dishes you can always add one more. Ask me to chop some brinjal as you put the oil pan on the stove. In no time you would have added an appetiser! And one more thing. Desert is one thing that is not served hot. You could prepare it in the morning in-between our tea breaks. That way you could offer a full three course meal to your friends. The whole point is that you start with a bare minimum plan so that your friends would never return hungry, and most importantly, you will derive confidence from the fact that at least basic requirement has been already taken care of and you will not panic…”
“Bou, this looks so simple. There is no reason it won’t work. I will certainly follow your words next time…”
The hot tea certainly felt special that afternoon…
Just overhearing this mentoring conversation gave me a life lesson for the rest of my life. Each time we invited some guests for dinner or we planned for a large scale party we would plan a simple meal to begin with and then plan on expanding it to suit the occasion, budget and mood, but never the other way around of getting started with a grand plan and scaling it down by forcing ourselves into a panic mode.
The lesson influenced my style at work. I explain this principle to my colleagues with the analogy of blowing balloons in a birthday party. You just blow one balloon, your child will be happy, because it is a complete display by itself. You try another balloon. Blow it a bit bigger. If it bursts your child will be a bit sad, but would still giggle. You at least know how big you can blow the next one. Keep blowing balloons to their maximum sizes, as many as you could to make the entire experience as majestic as possible. But the whole point is you can stop anytime you run out of time, or budget, and still not feel that you fell short of a ‘complete experience’.
That is how a home is built. You begin with a small living room where you can hang out, add a small kitchen to cook, and if you can afford a separate bed room go for it. Then if you have money and space add more bed rooms, else still feel happy and content with what you have.
That is how we wrote complex computer programs. We first wrote a program to compare two numbers and find out the larger number between the two. Then we added one more number to increase complexity and learning. Then we learnt the concept of adding subroutines. The key is, at each stages of our learning we were getting the experience and ‘kick’ from writing a complete computer program that compiled, was bug free, and gave correct output… much like the thrill of blowing one balloon…
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