Personal Archives - Page 5 of 19

On (not) having heros in life

May 4, 2012Paras ChopraPersonal, Philosophy8 Replies

Having heros is a dangerous habit. If you have a hero, expect to be disappointed and disillusioned when you discover they don’t approve of your interpretation of them. Your world will shatter when the hero that you respected so highly shrugs you and your ways off. You will then be forced to think: “how could my hero reject me, a person who is obviously shaped by the very same hero’s ideas and ways?“.

Suppose I respect Steve Jobs. Suppose he’s my hero; an ideal that I want to be. Obviously, I will try to emulate him and his ways. I will try developing my own point of view based on his thoughts. He likes simplicity, so I like simplicity. He likes good design, so I like good design. He can be ruthless and direct with other people, so I too should do the same. I’m in awe, and he is perfect. Of course, I don’t have to base my complete life on one hero; I can have multiple heros too. But if heros come to represent what I want to be, their ways ultimately dictate my life and choices. ... Read the entire post →

It’s OK to disagree in a face-to-face conversation

April 13, 2012Paras ChopraPersonal, Philosophy8 Replies

We have casual face-to-face (and telephonic) conversations everyday. We chat with our friends, discuss latest gossip with colleagues and sometimes also strike up conversations with strangers while waiting for a bus or something. I have observed that in such casual conversations most people (impulsively) tend to agree with each other, no matter what is being discussed. For example, imagine this conversation: I meet my cousin at a family function and I bring up my love for Goa as a vacation spot. Irrespective of his own opinions, my cousin is likely to respond in this manner: “Yes, it is really a fun destination”. For all I know, he may have hated his experience in Goa last time, but because of unsaid conventions, most conversations enter into mutual appreciation mode. I agree to what you say, and you agree to what I say. ... Read the entire post →

Why do people fall in love with nostalgic past?

March 25, 2012Paras ChopraPersonal, Philosophy3 Replies

We all know that feeling when the past seems beautiful and there is an uncontrollable longing to belong to a time that has already passed. Most of us romance our carefree childhood and want to relive those special moments every now and then. Artists amongst us want to live in the ages when Picasso and Dali were creating their masterpieces. Present day scientists wish to witness the years when Einstein, Darwin or Newton were just about to change the Zeitgeist forever. And, don’t writers today pine for the times when George Orwell or Shakespeare produced one great work after the other? We entrepreneurs in computer/technology space, how much we fancy times when PC industry was coming to an age with Bill Gates’s BASIC and Steve Jobs’ Apple II. ... Read the entire post →

Defying parents is mark of a thinking man

March 22, 2012Paras ChopraPersonal, Philosophy3 Replies

Remember your childhood? Those were the times when on a cool, breezy, slightly-sunny morning, you blissfully played on freshly dewed grass. You threw your sandals away, and while your eyes darted everywhere around, you ran barefoot, feeling small yet sweet pangs of cold seeping into your body. You were so lost in your joy that you didn’t realize that all you were doing is running purposelessly in circles. You felt blessed.

As a child, infectious enthusiasm was all you had and that produced an honest reality of your own that you believed in with full conviction. You invented that reality daily, but truly lived and breathed in it, never doubting its authenticity. When you saw or heard a ghost story, you actually believed in it and felt a beautiful joy of encountering it. Myths and fantasies of distant lands (mostly from absurd TV shows for children) were real. These fables were as real as your naive belief that one lucky evening you will get stuck in a candy or chocolate shop all alone. Didn’t you believe that Superman existed, and may probably come to help if you were in trouble? Or that Teletubbies were somewhere there having fun when you were not around? ... Read the entire post →

My Mixergy interview! Hear the story of Visual Website Optimizer

January 27, 2012Paras ChopraEntrepreneurship, Personal4 Replies

I was fortunate to have been interviewed by Andrew on his awesome website Mixergy.com. The interview was about how we bootstrapped Visual Website Optimizer to over 1000 paying customers. The video is long (75+ minutes) but I hope if you watch it, you enjoy it! (If you rather prefer reading transcript, it is also available on Mixergy).

Pick experiences over relationships

January 20, 2012Paras ChopraPersonal, Philosophy2 Replies

In a previous post, I wrote about what matters in life and what doesn’t. What I proposed was that these things don’t matter at all:

Ego
Material possessions

What matters instead is:

New experiences
Relationships

What if you have to choose between an experience or a relationship?

Such situations are always extremely hard. Imagine you need to go travel the world for a year but that means giving up (not fully investing) in a relationship (with friends, colleagues, spouse or parents). What would you do? Of course, there are many variables there but if you are really stuck at a decision, my recommendation is to pick a new experience over a relationship. ... Read the entire post →

Professional success and personal success: two independent dimensions

November 16, 2011September 7, 2020Paras ChopraPersonal, Philosophy8 Replies

All of us chase after success. For majority of us, success means achieving more in life. A better car, a bigger house, a promotion at job or a fancy watch. This particular definition of success pertains to what I call as professional success. Most of the stars, sports people, top shot CEOs and other celebrities that you know are at pinnacle of their professional success. They probably worked very hard to achieve what they have today and are also probably very proud of it. So far, so good.

But, there is another aspect of success. I call it personal success. If you compare two people: one movie star and another middle class office goer, do you really think movie star is more happy than the office goer? Deep inside they both have same happiness scale. In fact, for all the possessions and fame that a movie star has got, he may be actually not as happy as the regular office goer who gets to see his family every day and spend quality time with them. Regular Joe is happy as hell, why should he be ashamed of not being a movie star? ... Read the entire post →

What matters in life (and what doesn’t)

October 23, 2011Paras ChopraPersonal, Philosophy33 Replies

I’m probably too young to be writing on this topic but observing countless souls distressed by daily life made me think hard on what is that really matters in life. Undoubtedly, there are happy and sad phases and that’s part-and-parcel of life. But what I’m really bothered about is general, daily bitching about how miserable one’s life has become. You find people complaining about work, commute, relationships, other people’s attitudes & personalities, neighbor’s barking dog, lack of parking space, and, heck, some people also feel stressed about how they are unable to install latest iPhone update. Yes, I’m concerned about those people. Are these things really worth stressing about? Allow me to analyze.

=&0=&

Let’s start off by observing what doesn’t matter in life and why. Life would be much better and satisfying if everyone could do away with (or at least de-prioritizes following) two aspects:

Material possessions: countless sages have professed it and I completely with them that material possessions are source of most of the stress we face in our daily lives. Modern technology (and compulsion to keep up with it) only makes it much worse. Your car radiator broke down, your phone screen got a crack, you are unable to install USB drivers, or your expensive massage chair needs maintenance. Possessions end up taking over your daily life and you don’t even realize that. Wouldn’t you be much happier and free if you need not bother about constant purchasing, maintaining and discarding of possessions? I’m not advocating complete asceticism but my point here is that it is OK to be still using Windows 98. It is OK to travel by bus or taxi, and not having that fancy car. It is even OK if you don’t posses a phone (or if you have poor network provider, like mine — MTNL). It is OK to be like a free bird without any heavy baggage of material possessions.

Ego: the number 1 stress factor you have in your life is no-one but you. The compulsive drive to prove yourself right (and others wrong), the obsession with (financially) outdoing your peers, neighbors & friends, the depression about how you couldn’t score 100% in math exam, the fights over how the wall is painted with the wrong shade of blue, and anger over how a friend misplaced your favorite book. Source of tension and stress in all these situations is not society or the other person you are fighting with, but it is you. In long run, do these little ego fights really matter? Are you enriching your life by these ego fights where either you or someone else ends up feeling bad? Wouldn’t it be much better for all if you started giving less importance to yourself? Maybe it is hard, but just try living a day making yourself unimportant and your life will be much more satisfying (as you can kick your ego aside and you can focus on what really matters in life — see below).

... Read the entire post →

Wingify nominated for Red Herring Asia 100 and NASSCOM Emerge 50

October 10, 2011Paras ChopraEntrepreneurship, Personal5 Replies

I am happy to announce that we got nominated for not one, but two prestigious awards. The first one is Red Herring Asia 100, where they choose 100 companies from all over Asia who have potential to make it big. The other nomination is for NASSCOM Emerge 50 which choses 50 emerging companies from India in the IT field.

Red Herring is a widely recognized brand famous for spotting Microsoft during their infancy. On the other hand, NASSCOM is India’s top association of IT industry and is highly regarded for building India’s brand for IT services. I feel lucky to be nominated for these awards. The whole Wingify team (see below, yes we’re 8 people now) deserves to be recognized:

Please wish us luck for these awards. We have our fingers crossed!

Stupidity of free markets

September 5, 2011Paras ChopraPersonal2 Replies

This post is a slight, but important, detour from my usual posts about startups. Today, I watched the documentary Zeitgeist: moving forward. Even though I may not fully agree with the proposed solution, the problems and current flaws of free markets are very real and left a deep impression on me. If you care about the world, do watch the movie once. Here’s what the movie proposes:

=&0=&. Collapse of mindless consumption and materialism. End of profit-maximization at nature’s expense.

We humans are too narrow minded to comprehend the fact that the current system isn’t sustainable. The false hope that free markets will eventually take care of us all is a myth. Have they taken care of hungry, dying children in Africa? Have they taken care of species on brink of extinction? Do they really believe Earth’s resources and oil is endless?

But free markets are getting bailed out. Trillions of dollars spent on bailing them out can be spent curing poverty and hunger, but who will do that? Government officials take a narrow view of their 4 or 5 year term.

Who will think ahead and see if the current system of free-markets, consumption and wastage is sustainable till, say, 2050? If we don’t act today to stop the stupidity, who will?

Sadly, there may not be a tomorrow if we don’t act.