Category Archives: Of Interest

I bet the Bloods and the Crips would agree with this statement. If it’s red, you’re dead, and if you’re down with the blue, then you’re through. But, if you run an outsourcing business, you are probably not gang affiliated.

It is a proven fact that colors change your mood. Restaurants that have the right amount of maroon red seem to prosper. Red is the color of the fire element, and restaurants prosper when their innate element is present. Restaurants use fire to cook which is why its metaphysical color is red. But, the maroon shade of red seems to work miracles at Italian, Chinese and Japanese restaurants that I’ve been to.

Certain colors are good in advertising materials. Blue has a tone of stability while green stimulates creative thought. Pink makes you feel good while red is exciting and stimulating.

But, what about meetings? Does your meeting room have white walls? Maybe you need to paint the room every time you have a meeting to adjust what you want the mood to be. If you are having a meeting about creating a new marketing scheme, then green might help. Or perhaps having green plants in the room might help as plants have an amazing growth energy (if you remember to water them.)

Red is a good color to stimulate strong emotions. People might get all fired up or even angry if there is too much red around. I’m not sure being too robust at meetings is a good idea though. Red is a very strong color in feng-shui. A little goes a long way. The fire element can also stimulate other energies in a positive or negative way. So, be careful in how you use red!

Orange is a happy color. Also a fire element, but not as strong as red. Orange can stimulate enthusiasm, creativity, and determination.

Aqua is a very relaxing and calming color. If you want a meeting that is not too intense you could try aqua.

But, what if you could experiment with color at meetings. What if you could see if color theory really did affect your meetings in a small way, or even in a huge way. You could even have meetings by the beach, in a forest, or while walking just to see how the meeting went. There is a lot of experimentation you can do with meetings which can affect the output. My astrologer actually picks days for me to have meetings with various people. Certain days are good for business while other days are good for meeting with programmers if Uranus is in my chart on that particular day. It is complicated, but astrology has actually helped me plan my life. I avoid doing important things on days with negative constellations. So, experiment with astrology if you are using a professional. Experiment with color at meetings and with sales literature. Track the results of your experiments and see if color makes any difference.

We only are highly focused six hours per week. I see this in my personal work. I do a lot of busy-work such as working on my Twitter profile or writing blogs. But, the hours that we devote to deeper thinking are very critical. If you don’t use your focused hours right, your entire career will suffer. You need to figure out how to allocate your precious time — what to do more of and what to do less of.

When do you focus best and where?
When I first get out of bed, my brain can barely function. I do repetitive work then as I can’t really think. Then, I do emails and a few phone calls. But, my prime hours of focus are more in the evening. I do my deepest thinking between 10pm and 2am. I stay up late as a regular habit. I’m not sure if it is a good thing or not, but there are no distractions to my work at night when it is quiet. The problem is, that if I tired myself out with busy work, it is hard to focus.

I bet I would focus best if I did a little writing during the day, took a long walk, took a bath and then did my deep thinking. It is important to be refreshed from exercise, but not wiped out. Your brain is a very sensitive organ and performs well only under optimal conditions.

The key here is to identify not only which six hours you focus best, but which activities to do during those special six hours. Planning and analysis are very important to do during your peak hours of concentration as those are your most sophisticated and critical tasks.

Other people focus better in the morning. Should you waste your morning hours on meetings or other non-time sensitive work? Perhaps you should do your most critical tasks in the morning when you are fresh. Doing the right task at the right time of the day is absolutely essential. I have optimized my day by doing exactly what. What about you?

Most of us do not ponder the world around us enough. We see square office buildings, square people, and square lunches — especially if you eat Bento boxes in Japan. Squares are used in society because they are easy to use. You just stack one square on the other. You can make square city blocks, square buildings, square rooms, and square brains are sure to result from all of this squareness. However, squares are not an optimal shape for interaction. Additionally squares are not found in the cosmos.

Squares do not exist in nature except on planet of the squares
Look at nature. Do you see any squares? Are trees square? How about drops of water? Does grass grow in a square way? How about the shape of leaves? Do planets move in a square path? No! Planetary paths are eliptical. Energy flows around planets are circular. The earth goes around in a circle every 24 hours (which incidentally is not a square number) and the moon goes around the earth. The craters in the moon are circular, and the path of the earth around the sun is an elipse. So, squares do not occur in nature. Perhaps mankind is out of sinc with nature with all of these squares.

What about circles?
I studied feng-shui in a traditional school. Most people think that feng-shui is purely about moving your furniture around and buying silly looking coins and ducks to put in your bathroom. This is a simplification. Feng-shui is the study of how the energies around us affect our health, finances and more. We learned the circular rooms lead to more stimulating discussions. Additionally, circular rooms have better energy flow as the energy can bound around more freely and evenly than in a rigid square or rectangular room. However, I suddenly noticed that in my neighborhood we have three areas where the road is circular. Within these circles which are about 300 feet wide, amazing social events happen daily. People get together with their children, lovers, and friends. They socialize, play games and entertain in these circles. One circle has a place you can barbecue, exercise or just walk around. They even show films in that circle. In another circle there is a cafe with the most friendly staff and customers you can imagine. There is a conversation almost every time and lots of people of all ages around. The last circle has yet another cafe nearby, but not in the actual circle. This circle attracts many people who take walks, and kids play nearby as well. Families have picnics on the picnic tables as well. So, the whole circles in garden design theory seems to lead to amazing socialization.

What about the BPO business? Can circles help?
Google+ believes in circles and they did okay in business. However, it might be hard to find an office building in the shape of a circle unless you build it yourself. But, imagine how offices would be if they were built by extra-terrestrials. I bet they would look very cosmic and be huge circles connected to each other by passovers and walkways. Nobody builds buildings like this now, but if someone starts a trend, it might catch on. I believe you would do better in business if you had a circular office — and I can prove that using circular logic! But, don’t believe me — keep your eyes out for circles in your life and how they affect those around them or within them!

I sat in the court-room thinking that I would be a fair juror on the trial only to be asked to leave. What a relief! I didn’t want to be trapped for nine days on Jury duty anyway. But, would I have been completely fair, or not? After all, the defense Attorney pointed out that I had had many bad experiences with cops. Was I unconsciously biased?

But, how do our biases affect us in the work place? Are we biased against people because of how they talk, behave, their educational level, or their race? The answer is that we are all biased. Even if we try to be even-handed and fair. How many of us are really fair? And does the fact that we feel that others may not be fair to us affect how we treat them?

How do we detect our own inner biases and how do we fix them? When hiring, you might see some resumes and have some interviews with applicants. The problem is that if any of the applicants remind you of people you have hired in the past, you will be sure to judge them based on those other people. Is that really fair? On the other hand behavioral recognition is important. If you spot a behavioral trait that can lead to disaster, your bias might come in handy.

How can you condition yourself to see past the personalities, the races, and the genders? Is there a way to have more performance based assessment of people? Or perhaps that is once again wrong. Maybe our biases are our subconscious’ secret way of guiding us to success and avoiding threats and problems.

In the end, I would say that compatibility is the most important aspect of hiring. Putting aside how good people are at their work, if they don’t get along with their boss and coworkers, it is all in vein. Becoming an expert at compatibility seems to me to be the most important aspect of hiring, and perhaps your biases might help you in this respect if you ask yourself the right questions.

Would I want to be stuck on a four hour car ride with this person?
If the answer is yes, then you might be able to endure some tough situations that arise in the work place and have a relationship that lasts!