Ankur Sharma

It takes a toll on you. All of a sudden, it makes you believe that death is imminent. It is close by. And you better live with the philosophy Steve Jobs made famous with his commencement speech , "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" Just in case you are not following my blog, the two people who I wrote about, were Steve Jobs and Jagjit Singh . They couldn't be more different from each other. But from the time I have been thinking about writing this note, all I could see was similarities. They both were geniuses in their own field and transformed the way people saw their respective industries. Mirza Ghalib once said, "When your creations are started being used by tawayafs and fakirs " - 19th century version of common man - "then you are destined to be immortal". Steve Jobs did that to Personal Computers and Jagjit Singh to Ghazals.

My father has been a lasting influence on how I and my siblings think, what we do and aspire. He isn't one of those expressive ones who would cuddle and would take us to play. That was Mummy's job. His way of showing love was talking about the studies, giving pat on the back when we did good and of course bashing up when we didn't raise up to the bar. But there was one thing which bind him and me, even till today. Ghazals My Father had a childlike fanaticism about them (he is kinda grown up now). In 1970s , when buying music system in India wasn't as easy as buying groceries and wasn't as cheap as Rs. 4000;  he got it assembled, just to make sure that he gets to listen Ghazals on "just the right music system". He sat through all night in the recording shops, to get the live recordings of Ghazals on the  cassette tape and spent lavish sum of his salary (by those standards) to get those tapes. I grew up listening those Ghazals and understanding

Last month, when I wrote a post about Steve Jobs , his famous Stanford Commencement Speech and Karma; little did I realize that I am going to write another post about him so soon, and not for all the right reasons. He is no more and his passing away has made even the President of United States comment about how Jobs was "bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it". Surely he was. He first changed the way people publish content, by working with Adobe. People only talk about their conflict, in the light of iPad not using Flash. Rarely do they talk about what they both together did to publishing industry. I believe his second biggest contribution was to change the way people see music. Sony had already started this revolution, but it was Jobs and Ive and iPod, who drove it from inflection point. Now there is nothing else which has not already been written about him, post his death. But having said that, there is one thing which

"If we aren't a lot better next year, we will already be forgotten," Page said to one of the first reporters visiting the company.  The founders also knew that Google had to be a lot smarter to keep satisfying users - and to fulfill the world-changing ambitions of its founders. "We don't always produce what people want," Page explained in Google's early days. "Its really difficult. To do that you have to be smart - you have to understand everything in the world. In computer science, we call that artificial intelligence." Brin chimed in. "We want Google to be smart as you-you should be getting an answer the minute you think of it." - From " In The Plex " By Steven Levy

Getting out of comfort zone is sexy! But is it really so? With all the Seth Godins of the world touting it as the next best thing to do, it surely has become glamorous to talk and rave about it. Though what happens when this secure bubble really bursts? (or you break out of it, due to its sheer sex appeal) Well, for people who have already not seen this transition - it can leave you feeling uncertain at the best of the times, while incompetent at the worst of hours. There would be no peer network to fall back upon, who already know that "you are the best". In fact, it will be the process to start all over. Making new friends, failing all over, building credibility all over and it gets tougher by the day since all this comes along with the expectations to deliver! As they say, "Take calculated risk, it's better than being rash" And now that you have the both the sides of coin on breaking out of comfort zone; take the leap only if it suits you and