Paddy Upton's Barefoot Coach

Paddy Upton is not just a sports coach. He is also a researcher and professor. Instead of anecdotes and personal coaching style tips,  he brings-in a comprehensive thesis on achieving excellence based on latest research findings in this great book. He provides a lot of insights for individuals as well as leaders. For a cricket crazy nation, this book is bound to resonate very well and I hope many reads it. I am not that much into Cricket(or any other sports for that matter), but I found the lessons  interesting are equally applicable to any pursuit. 

Core part of the story is about what did Paddy, as mental conditioning coach for Indian cricket team in the ICC 2011 world cup campaign,  try and how it helped in India winning the cup. Key takeaways in my opinion are 

1. Identify your values(if have not done already) and take it seriously
2. Focus more on ones strengths rather than weakness
3. Focus on the process rather than the outcomes
4. Empower the individuals or if you are that individual be empowered
5. Use your intuition appropriately
6. Practice to be in the moment and operate in the 'zone'. Consciously avoid distractions
7. While the advice is not to focus on the outcome, don't use that as an excuse. Be 200% committed to the outcome. 
8. Review and learn from failures and then move on

These points would sound obvious and boring, that is why I urge everyone to read this book and put the insights you learn into practice. Become your best self.

Back to basics

It is the results season. Kids and parents are talking about what they have scored and which college to study next and how much money its going to cost. Lots of courses are talked about. But one thing I am very sure about is no parent or kid is talking about studying philosophy as a course. I am not even sure if BA philosophy is even offered as a degree course in some college. 

We want results and now. Job and immediately after degree. Profit and right after one starts of business. When I read about "First Principles Approach" I just fell in love with that concept. One can say it's a fancy way of saying "Ask Why", which it kind of is.  Nevertheless when we look at the world from a "First Principles" point of view it gives a completely different meaning to even mundane things . Your decisions become much more clear. It also shows how people are completely unable to do simple reasoning on their every day decisions or when they take a political position. Don't get me wrong, this is not hubris. Most people would take a much better decision than me, but I am also certain most people don't have solid reasoning on why they take a particular decision. Social and empirical rules influence our decisions a lot or at least help to get to one quickly. But the problem is that decisions that doesn't have solid reasoning also hampers the society and self in making progress. Irrationality creeps in and costs a lot of money, time, opportunities and creates avoidable problems. I think that's why studying philosophy will train the society to reason right and wrong, ethics and morals, instead of just taking deciding from empirical formulas.

I was extremely glad when I saw the an assignment on Kantian and Utilitarian approaches to ethics in our Information Systems course. I was hoping that we would have detailed discussion. But due to lack of time and probably also due to our aversion of anything philosophy we did not delve into the first principles of ethics of privacy policies of IT companies in our class. I would have enjoyed that session.

I am kind of digressing; it's getting late and you are losing interest. My argument is that we think education and learning is a way to get a job or advance our career or improve the profit as a business. I think it is wrong and counter productive. We need to go back to basics, learn the first principles, and have a philosophical construct. Then one would learn to make better decisions and that will help him/her with better jobs, advance career and help improve profit of their organizations.

I am looking forward to a day when Logic and Categorical imperative is taught in Kindergarten and beyond.