It’s the silence between the notes that makes the music; it’s the space between the bars that cages the tiger - Zen Proverb

We have instituted a new rule for our five year old. Every day, she needs to do 20 mins of Boring Time. In hindsight, we should have named it better, but the basic idea is this - she needs to spend this time by herself. She can do drawing or painting, read a book, or just be by herself. She can’t watch TV/iPad, go out to play with friends, or disturb the parents (genius, isn’t it :P). The idea is for her to learn to entertain by herself, without any external sources of distraction.

Yesterday, when I asked her to do her Boring Time, she asked me when my Boring Time was? Kids have a knack for asking excellent questions with such simplicity.

It got me thinking. Not only do I not have a Boring Time for myself, but I also haven’t had it for ages. There is always some work at the office, some chore at home that needs attention, more books to read, and podcasts to watch. And then there is the daily dose of unending digital notifications - Email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Even while watching a movie, listening to music, and often in the middle of a conversation with friends, I am often distracted by my phone.

Success is a lousy teacher, it seduces smart people into thinking they cannot lose - Bill Gates

I am glad that we got Ashgo (Ashish Goel, co-founder of Urban Ladder) to join us for the last ROTW Live session. I know that many of you would have missed attending the session, but it was amazing talking to him and hearing about various facets of the Urban Ladder journey.

I have always been a proud Urban Ladder customer and a long time well-wisher. Listening to Ashgo talk about so many things that they got right, like creating a strong values-driven culture and building a guest-centric DNA in the company, and knowing the end outcome (which has certainly not been commensurate to the tremendous effort put in by the team, over the years) reminded me of a concept I read about long back - The phenomenon called Resulting (the tendency to equate the quality of the input with the quality of the output). And how most of us, especially the tech media falls prey to Resulting.

The legendary entrepreneur Tony Hsieh passed away last week in a tragic accident. Tony was the CEO of Zappos, who built a billion-dollar company selling shoes online. It eventually got acquired by Amazon in 2010.

He also wrote a phenomenal book called Delivering Happiness. It’s literally a story of delivering happiness as a business by living a life of passion and purpose. It’s been one of those books that I have often re-read over the years; and one that has undoubtedly shaped our thinking about building a customer-first brand.

As a small tribute to Tony, I wanted to share an excerpt from the book, highlighting his philosophy on building a great culture and how a strong culture can lead to building a strong brand.

I don’t know about you, but I thoroughly enjoyed the latest ROTW live on the future of news. It is a fascinating topic.

For those who couldn’t attend it, we were discussing about the future of news. How would the news and media industry change in the coming years? What would a company that builds the future of news looks like? And who is the natural owner of this space? Is it Netflix, Facebook, Google, or someone completely different? Would it be a media company that gets tech and distribution? Or a tech company that gets journalism?

One company has tried to build a new age news & media company, and we somehow missed talking about it. It’s Buzzfeed.

Buzzfeed is both a media company and a tech company. It’s a media company because it knows how to produce broad-based content interesting to the masses. It gained popularity with its online quizzes and listicles type articles but later expanded the site into long-form journalism and reporting. 

Our house is a bit of a student dorm these days. Like most kids, my daughter takes her classes online, and now my wife, Pragati, has also started her remote classes for her fellowship at Harvard. This week, she had her first monthly assignment submissions. I was quite taken by her general approach towards it.

Instead of simply finishing the assignment and moving on to the next one (like most people do), she got started with the assignment pretty much from the day she received it. She then did a copious amount of research in the first couple of weeks and then started working on the arc of her storyline.