One of the practices that has really helped me as a leader has been the study of Vedanta. It is not a religion (I'm Jewish) but rather a philosophy on how to live a life of happiness. It is all about gaining control over your mind - that your mind is where the secret to happiness really lives. If you would like to dive in, here is a five-minute video on why you may feel so tired “because of your job” to entice you. The great news is that, in these times of COVID-19, their classes are now available online for free. In 2013, Debra and I went all the way to just outside of Pune, India to study this in person at The Vedanta Academy with the then 85-year old founder, Swamiji Parthasarathy (who wrote my favorite book on business and relationships simply titled "Governing Business and Relationships" - the chapter on Leadership is just incredible).
The importance of an Always Be Learning life
Happy New Year's, everyone! I wish you much prosperity and love in 2018.
As you may have seen me tweet earlier this week, my New Year's Resolution is to write more. I truly love writing - to write is to serve, to write is to learn, to write is to meditate. I'm going to take a different tact this year, though - I'm going to write more frequently and hopefully much shorter. I like writing longer posts but I'm spending over 70 hours per week on data.world and then some time on our startup investments - and of course I very much care about spending time with my wife and children. So, in short there just isn't much room for more. As a matter of fact, in 2017 I resigned from two non-profit Boards (Conscious Capitalism and Entrepreneurs Foundation) that I really love just to create more time for data.world. Both were painful decisions for me but a startup really needs that type of focus, and I'm truly having a blast working alongside an incredible team at data.world on a very important mission.
I've already got a running list of seven more topics (and growing quickly) that I plan to write about as soon as I can but for now - for my first post in a long time - I want to talk about the importance of having an Always Be Learning mindset and practice.