[This is part 3 of my journey into triathlon over the last 2 years. You can read the first two parts here: Triathlons: A story in gradual change and Triathlons: Persevering in Gradual Change] Several months ago, after completing an olympic length triathlon, I signed up for a Half Ironman length triathlon (1.2mi…
Shortly after college, I had a passing interest learning chess and I used to watch videos of chess games with commentary by Josh Waitzkin. At a young age, Josh played at a very high level and the expectation at the time was that he would go on to be the…
Early in my career, I had the opportunity to serve as a project leader over some of my peers. Shortly thereafter, one of them, an extremely talented engineer, and I both got promotions. As his project leader, I attended the manager’s meeting to give him his promotion and then I…
Sometime ago while my wife and I were living in India, she volunteered at a foster home for children whose parents had once had leprosy. Once those parents caught the disease their community ostracized them even after they were treated and cured. Unable to find a job, the parents struggled to provide food…
Ever seen those cars trucking down the road with stuff hanging out the sides and wonder how they could think they need so much? Maybe more close to home, how often after a trip do we unpack and put away clothes we never used and books we never read? We…
Swimming has been a part of my life as far back as I can remember. I used to go swimming regularly with my cousins at my grandparents pool and lived close enough to the ocean to swim there occasionally. I even remember doing an open water swim (probably 300m) in…
A wise leader once told me, it’s not the problems that managers know about that cause them to get fired, it’s the ones they never see coming. As such, he made sure that his people told them of all the problems they were running into or heard about. This message…
Several years ago, I managed a group of engineers that tested the system developed by our organization. Most people we worked with didn’t exactly understand what happens when we test something; we didn’t build anything but added something less substantive: quality As such, if someone wanted us to test something…
I was recently visiting with a friend who retired after working as an executive for many years. He was sharing that he recently went to a doctor’s office and noticed some inefficiencies in the way they were handling their business and found himself making suggestions to the receptionist about how…
At an earlier startup, we sold software to large corporations which entailed wrangling many people together in order to make a sale. Usually, it entailed convincing engineers it was the right decision, them convincing their management to do something, followed by a negotiation over business terms, and then approval of the budget.…