My memoir of 12 defining moments: Reminiscing the year gone by
Our lives are measured in moments, and defining moments are the ones that endure in our memories. These are meaningful experiences that create ripples and stand out. Moments we can never forget. When we assess our experiences, we don't average our minute-by-minute sensations. Rather, we tend to remember flagship moments: the peaks, the pits, and the transitions.
What makes a particular experience memorable and meaningful? Why do we remember certain experiences and forget others?
As I closed the year reading ‘The Power Of Moments’ by Chip and Dan Heath, I was tempted to bring the EPIC framework (mentioned in the book) to life by reflecting on the year gone by. Here are my 12 defining moments of 2021 along with a systematic method to think about architecting more meaningful moments for 2022.
Moments Of Elevation (E)
These are experiences that rise above the routine. They make us feel engaged, joyful, amazed, motivated. These moments transcend the normal course of events. They are literally extraordinary peaks that can make our jaws drop. A peak means something special is happening; it looks different. Peaks don't emerge naturally. They are built. To exceed expectations we need to be aware of the soul-sucking force of "reasonableness", and learn to leverage the behavioural and interpersonal aspects to create an element of surprise.
Moments of elevation have 3 characteristics:
they boost sensory appeal
they raise the stakes
they break the script
Boosting sensory appeal is about "turning up the volume"on reality like heading out for a spontaneous road trip.
Harappa Rishikesh Offsite
A multi sensory experience like no other to reconnect with the company’s mission, vision, values and strategy. All of this in the midst of the evening Ganga aarti and the majestic Himalayas.
To raise the stakes is to add an element of productive pressure and up the ante like a competition or a performance.
Harappa Bridge
A two day virtual event that brought industry and academia on the same page. With the quality of people involved as speakers and guests, my team was on a zero error execution mandate. The ratcheting up of pressure prompted countless dry runs and mission control rooms. We ended up pulling off a flawless experience.
Breaking the script is to defy people's expectations of how an experience will unfold like getting a free dessert at a restaurant.
From Jabalpur To Visakhapatnam
Undertaking a 2 hour logistics sprint during the Covid lockdown to get cake and coffee delivered across 10 cities (courtesy Zomato) to the house of every team member in India. There was no greater moment of happiness for me this year.
Moments Of Pride (P)
These moments commemorate people's achievements. We feel our chest puff out and our chin lift. Moments of pride have 3 principles:
Recognising others
Multiplying meaningful milestones
Practicing courage
The first principle creates defining moments for others; the latter two allow us to create defining moments for ourselves.
Recognising others: Regardless of how skilled we are, iť's usually having our skill noticed by others that sparks the moment of pride. If we think about our moments of pride in our career, many of them will be examples of recognition: Getting promoted. Winning an award. Being praised. The single biggest motivating factor for people to come to work everyday is to be able to get a “full appreciation of work done”.
Harappa ECx Stars
A big moment of pride for me was when many members of my team were recognised by other team heads for the quality and integrity of work done through the year. As a team head myself, I had no greater feeling of satisfaction, considering I began this year with tough feedback on improving my style of leadership.
Multiplying Milestones: Success comes from pushing to the finish line. Carefully choosing milestones that are worth reaching for and within our grasp can compel us to make that push. But we don’t need to be stuck with just one finish line. By multiplying milestones, we can transform a long, amorphous race into one with many intermediate "finish lines." As we push through each one, we experience a burst of pride as well as a jolt of energy to charge toward the next one.
Curiosity Quests
My interest, to understand why humans behave the way they do, led me to ramp up my home library this year. A milestone of reading 1 chapter a day while underlining with a Reynolds pen has helped me build a treasure chest of smudged wisdom for my second brain (a digital storage of all my ideas, thoughts and beliefs).
Courage: We never know when courage will be demanded in life. Courage is resistance to fear and mastery of fear, not absence of fear. Successful practice of a courageous performance can lead to a reduction in fear and a bolstering of confidence. Moments when we display courage make us proud. Courage can also be contagious; our moments of action can be a defining moment for others.
Tea, Toast and Walks
For me the biggest moment of courage was to break out of my comfort zone of living in my home city of Bangalore to setting up a new house 2000 km away in the city of Noida. The move helped me appreciate the minimal style of living - a hot cup of early morning tea coupled with long walks surrounded by birds and nature.
Moments Of Insight (I)
These moments deliver realisations and transformations. These are ignition moments of inescapable truth that can deliver a jolt. Moments of insight can be be engineered by doing 3 things:
Tripping over the truth
Stretching
Engaging with a mentor
Tripping over the truth: This is an insight that packs an emotional wallop. When we have a sudden realisation, one that we didn't see coming, and one that we know viscerally is right, we’ve tripped over the truth. It's a defining moment that in an instant can change the way we see the world. Tripping over the truth involves (1) a clear insight (2) compressed in time and (3) discovered ourselves.
Grades Of Entrepreneurship
The biggest insight I discovered this year was while ruminating about the idea of Entrepreneurship near the beaches of Goa. The insight that there can be different grades of entrepreneurship, and one has to pick the one that best suits one’s needs and personality. From being a freelance solopreneur to being an entrepreneur in residence inside a company to running a boutique mom and pop shop to scaling a series A funded startup to becoming a unicorn, each is a different grade for a different type of person. Further the insight that entrepreneurship can be a very lonely affair and does not necessarily mean having a sense of freedom, especially after having raised a lot of money for one’s startup. The irony being that one always thought of entrepreneurship as a way to feel free.
Stretching: These are moments of self insight. To stretch is to place ourselves in situations that expose us to the risk of failure. The promise of stretching is not success, it's learning. What may be counterintuitive is that self-insight rarely comes from staying in our heads. Action leads to insight more often than insight leads to action.
Write Of Passage
I enrolled in a life changing online cohort based writing course called ‘Write of Passage’ by David Perrell. I have never counted writing to be a notable skill in my repertoire, but this course pushed me like no other to write 1 long form essay (like this one) every week for 5 straight weeks. And oh boy, it was hard! What seemed like torture to begin with has now turned into a joy with this 9th end of year essay.
Engaging with a mentor: Mentors can help us stretch further than we thought we could, and in the process they can spark defining moments. Mentors focus on improvement: Can you push a little bit further? Can you shoulder a little more responsibility? Good mentors have a formula: they set high standards, give us an assurance that we can succeed, provide specific direction on what we can do to stretch and finally offer support to help us recover in case we fail.
Growth Mindset
Having had the chance to shadow the CEO and Chairman of Harappa, I have come to understand two things: the power of living the growth mindset by trying to get better 1% everyday along with the power of building relationships with people. When both these forces combine, there’s literally nothing in the world that cannot be done. Observing both of them in action has inspired me to move out of my comfort zone (of being an introvert) and embrace the joy of serendipitously meeting with people.
Moments of connection (C)
These are social moments that are more memorable because they bond us together. We feel warmth, unity, empathy and validation. Creating shared meaning that highlights the mission that binds us together and supersedes our differences can spark moments of connection for groups. This can be accomplished by doing 3 things:
Creating a synchronised moment
Inviting a shared struggle
Connecting to meaning
Creating a synchronised moment: This is a shared experience when everyone comes together at the same time. When we come together in groups, we are constantly assessing the reactions and feelings of the group. Our words and glances are a kind of social sonar. Are you still here? Are you hearing what I’m hearing? Are your reactions like mine? We are synchronising our reactions. Take laughing for example. Laughing is less about humour and more about relationships. Laughing in groups is a way of sending positive signals back and forth to synchronise reactions. We laugh to tie the group together. Our laughter says I’m with you. I’m part of your group.
Family Gratitude
The Covid lockdown gave me a chance to reconnect with my family. I used this chance to bond with them over home made meals as well as short getaways to nearby cities. The time spent with them made me realise how much gratitude I owe them for the sacrifices they made for me so many years ago.
Inviting shared struggle: We bond when we struggle together. We endure a gruelling experience with others and emerge with bonds that will never break. Perceived pain increases “prosociality”, or voluntary behaviour to benefit others. Extreme rituals - and specifically the shared experience of pain - can be seen as “social technology” to bind groups together. People will welcome struggle when it’s their choice to participate, when they’re given autonomy to work, and when the mission is meaningful.
The Forming Of Harappa ECx
The 9am cadence call with my team over 8 weeks during the traumatic Covid lockdown was the biggest defining moment of the year. This call became a space for everyone in the team to share their personal grief, loss and anxieties while collectively hoping for the pandemic to end. This was a war-like moment where each of us came together to help one another while being at our most vulnerable selves.
Connecting to meaning: These moments reconnect people with the purpose of their efforts and motivate and encourage us to go “above and beyond” work. When we understand the ultimate contribution we’re making, it allows us to transcend the task list. Purpose can knit groups together. It is a sense that we are contributing to others, that our work has broader meaning. Purpose trumps passion when it comes to meaning. Passion is individualistic and a feeling of excitement or enthusiasm we have about our work. It can energise us but also isolate us, because everyone has a different passion. By contrast, purpose is something people can share.
Plunge
I’ve always wanted to go back to teaching kids science in a DIY manner. The experience of seeing real joy on the faces of kids after they build projects is an experience to die for - even if done online. This was a special year as I plunged into launching 2 pro bono cohorts of my ‘Become a Junior Engineer’ course for kids aged 10. Each of them ended up building a hydraulic crane and solving a real world engineering problem at home.
Defining moments are magical and they shape our lives, but we don't have to wait for them to happen. We can shape and engineer them. As we enter 2022, the charge I have for myself is to defy the forgettable flatness of everyday work and life by intentionally creating more precious moments. Having read this book I’m more determined than ever to use attention and energy to transform ordinary moments into extraordinary ones. As noted by Chip and Dan, ‘to recognise where the prose of life needs punctuation’.
Wish you a very happy and defining new year!
