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Need another holiday…

Back in the office. Back to work. Back to where I left everything…

You knew it was a matter of time before this popped up on my watch…

That’s right – my watch was telling me, a minute of deep breathing can reduce stress.

There’s a number of things that can stress us out. It could be work, people, surroundings…

What can stress do to us?

We don’t want that!

So, what do I do when i’m Getting a little stressed or a message of that nature pops up on my watch?

Well…. firstly, I try to get some fresh air.

Most of my time, I either spend in an air conditioned environment (like my office) or an aeroplane. And whilst I need to be in these environments, I do try to go out for a walk. Most of the time – the office is in a built up area, or town centre… but still…. a walk can help. 10-15 minutes of walking, clearing my mind… can help reduce stress.

In addition to the above point – I find an ice cream also helps.

Music. That also helps me. Some relaxing music helps. Not Dr Dre or Wu Tang Clan. Some soothing and calming music usually does the trick.

There’s a few things that can help to reduce stress…

So if you’re getting a little stressed or messages are popping onto your watch of the stress nature…. slow down, relax, try to enjoy like…. take it a little easy and my favourite – Go outside!

Smiley faces all round.

Turn that frown, upside down!

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We all need to get away…

Bal, where have you been for the past few weeks? – no new activity on your blog…

Well… I did mention I was going to jet off for a few weeks in the sun and copious amount of food. Which I did. And thoroughly enjoyed.

This was my view for the past few weeks…

I didn’t realise how much I needed the break. I was going at 100mph. I had so much going on, both at work, my personal ventures, startups I’m involved, institutions I’m working with… and on top of that, lots going on at home!

It was only a few days into the holiday, that I was able to totally relax and reflect.

It was at the moment, I was floating on a pink lilo that I realised how fast I was going… and that not only did I really need this break, but needed to slow down and reflect.

We’re all guilty of it. Working. Head down. Moving forward. Not stopping.

But we need to.

So what did I do on holiday… well, I relaxed. I read a book (which was excellent by the way, and I recommend it!) – it was ‘The subtle art of not giving a f**k’.

I was also able to reflect… on everything that’s going on. Able to re-position, able to re-adjust some of my priorities, able to… re-fine my long term plan.

‘Bal… you have a long term plan?’

Don’t we all? – as I was taught at Kodak… Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail.

I do always have a Plan B. Courtesy of Mr Mike Tyson, who reminded me… ‘Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the face’.

So all in all…. great holiday, great book, great to re-energise myself, good to slow down and reflect and best thing… re-focus.

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Busy July, Calm August…

As you’ve probably seen from my twitter feed and insta account – I’ve been travelling a lot in July.

To say it’s been crazy is an understatement. Rotterdam, Toronto, Berlin and Brussels.

But I’m hoping for a calmer August. Why? – well, I’m going on holiday…. That’s why!

Thoroughly deserved as well if I may say so… but in the back of my head, I’ll be thinking about emails, work going on, etc… There’s a wonderful chart that illustrates this…

I’ve said before… it’s important to take a break. Most of us, are on laptops. And there comes a time when our laptop slows down, we need to stop it – shut it down, and then start again. Similar to us… we have so much going on… mentally, that we need to shut down and start again.

I won’t be having my phone on. I will definitely not be checking emails. If someone wants me – you have two options… 1. Talk to someone in my team and get the best advice from them, 2. Wait for me to come back.

Admittley, I’m not taking the holiday at a busy time of the year nor is it during a period when everything is happening – you know these times in the year we come across. I’m taking it in August. During school summer holidays. But also – that shouldn’t matter. You should take your holidays, when you want, how you want!

I remember this post from Cristina when she went on holiday…

Brings a lot of attention about how important it is.

So folks, I won’t be posting much… you’ll get my Friday thought – because I know there’s a lot of people that watch out for them and enjoy reading them. Otherwise, a few weeks with no blogs… unfortunately. However, I will be back mid-August….firing on all cylinders (as they say!)

Thanks…Bal…sat on a beach… somewhere in the Mediterranean

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Happy 100th Birthday Nelson…

On this day, in 1918… Nelson Mandela was born.

Now, most of you will know about him… his struggles, his fights and his wins.

What I wanted to do, was share some of his words… because he was known to write and share thoughts that would make folk think. Not only about the current situation but the future.

There’s a few quotes of his which I love…

Such a strong statement that can be applied to everyday, every walk… every life.

Then my favourite…

It’s all about education.

Learn and then, learn some more.

 

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Didn’t they do well….

Let’s be honest.. hasn’t it been a great Summer so far, especially with the FIFA World Cup!

All the surprises… who would have thought Germany would’ve gone out during the group stages… or that Croatia would’ve made it to the Finals?

Or how’s about, England making it to the Semi Finals? I know… although there was a moment we all thought that the finals were ours… we did very well in Russia this summer.

But most in particular for me, it came down to one thing. Leadership.

That’s right… the leader, the manager, the person in charge. Mr. Southgate.

Couple of things that really stood out for me….. (that made it a bit magical).

1. The Passion.

A normally quiet kind of guy… composed and not necessarily always full of emotions… however, the passion was there.

When we won, there was a moment when Gareth would walk over to the fans and really encourage them… Thank them…. show the passion!

And this filtered down to the players. They played with passion. They stepped up and that’s one of the reasons why the England team did well.

2. The Experience

We know he’s been there. He’s experienced heart ache. He’s got the scars and the stories.

You have to have been through those times, those difficult times…. where either things haven’t gone right and/or you know what could’ve made it better.

And it’s that…that helps you learn. Make things better for the future. With experience…. comes that knowledge.

3. Humanity

There were several other words I could’ve used. Compassion. Kindness. Sympathy…..

After the Semi Final game…. Gareth, hugged each devasted player. Hugged the staff.

After the majority had gone home. Hugged his wife. It’s this quality that shows he cares. Deep down… he cares. It matters to him. A lot.

Even at the press conference, thanked the players, the staff, the fans – especially those who travelled over… thanked Russia for hosting such a wonderful World Cup, thanked everyone.

Thank you Gareth. You exceeded expectations.

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Bal and Friends at NTU…

Last week was a crazy week! – Firstly, I was in Barcelona for meetings on Monday morning… (thanks to the lovely taxi driver who got me to the office on time!)

Oh… if you’d like to follow my personal journies including lots of travel & food photos, pop over to my instagram account – @mrbalbansal

So that was Monday. Then I came back, and was at the NTU… with a few friends.

That’s right – my friend Shane Matthews (inventor of the Nerf Gun) was over from Atlanta, GA. He was here to give a talk at the Nottingham Trent University… but first, we went to meet the Sheriff of Nottingham.

In the photo above, we have the Sheriff of Nottingham in the middle, Shane and myself, and the Sheriff’s security. We went to Nottingham Castle, had a little look around, posed for some photo’s, gave an interview to Notts TV and Shane signed a few nerf guns.

The main event was Shane talking at the NTU (Nottingham Trent University)… at their Ignite Innovation conference…

They also, kindly let me say a few words…

We also had my friend Leigh, who worked for CIMAGINE, a startup that was sold to SnapChat for $40m…. he shared his views and thoughts on AR…

And then Shane was up… he was brilliant. The audience in the lecture theatre absolutely loved it!

One thing I loved about his talk was the ‘happiness line’. I’ll have to share it with you in another blog post…

So all in all, great event at the NTU. This university is definitely doing the right things for the local community.

And thank you to the love that was shown by folks in the audience..

Then the remainder of the week I was in London, meetings… and a quick attendance for the London Tech Week.

Well, what a busy week… why am I sharing this, because if you have the opportunity to attend local meetings, conferences where they have some interesting people… do so! You can learn so much.

So many folk at the end, were coming up to Shane, asking all sorts of questions… it was great to see that they were motivated and more importantly, had learnt something that they could use in their business or organisation.

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Here’s an idea, cupcake…

I was talking to a colleague, and mentioned to him – need this sooner than you think, I feel we’re losing time and really need to move faster.

His reply… “Bal… you can’t have 9 women to produce a baby in 1 month. It’ll take 1 woman, 9 months… to have a baby”.

Wow! – love it.

It’s true, right? – sometimes we try to rush, do things quicker… all because many of us don’t have patience…. don’t we all want things quicker?

We do.. but there’ll be restrictions. There’ll be ways of doing it. Building a house… we could skip the foundations and start building, but will it be sustainable? – will it stay standing up? For how long?

Things do take time. We all need a little bit of patience.

However, if you can do something and then have iterations in place to improve… then that’s the best scenario.

The key thing is – understand the limitations. Learn the restrictions. And work with them. Plan with them. Cater for them.

This brings me nicely to the project we’re working on… when I was asking for something sooner than it could be built. So I learned and took those dependencies with me…. and developed the plan to incorporate them.

I explained this to a startup i’m working with – things take time, don’t rush them. Like baking a cake… bring it out of the oven too earlier, it’s undercooked and your customer won’t be happy. Leave it in too long… then customer won’t be happy but also… customer might have gone to someone else who’s got it out on time…

Yes. It can be tricky to know when to take the cake out of the oven.

Yes. It can be daunting, as you keep opening the oven door… lose the heat… and have to leave it in loner.

Yes. The competition will also be baking a cake, and may have a better idea of when to take it out.

Yes. The customer will be looking at all bakers. Looking for who’s going to bring out the cake first… and is edible.

Yes. You’ll have a lot of things going on whilst baking the cake….

This is why it’s important to know what to deliver… and when.

Maybe a cupcake might be a good idea… as the first offering. Before you starting working on that 3-tier, wedding cake.

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What’s it like, to have non-human colleagues?

At first, you may laugh at the title of this blog…. well, Bal… I have plenty of them now! – well, I say that… they’re non-human in the manner they don’t do much work! (Insert some laughter emoji).

We joke about our colleagues – often comparing how much work they do…. how much work we do… how much work is expected….

But let’s be honest – there’ll always be a level of either doubt or suspicion on how much work is actually being done.

 

You can’t treat humans as robots. And there’s various reasons why… from reasons such as, depends on the tasks – and humans provide a better degree of thinking when it comes to particular problems… to, the creativity and passion side of things.

But then, how can you replace your workforce with robots?

It’s those repetitive tasks… like the boxes that need stacking at the end of the production line, doors onto a car on an assembly line…. maybe, it’s those tasks that require a lot of movement, in the same manner, over and over and over again.

Maybe, the way we start is by job-sharing with a robot.

Alibaba… in China, is doing just that. We can’t just suddenly jump to robot’s taking over…. there needs to be levels of introductions. Maybe this is the first step…

That’s right – the Day begins with these robots receiving their instructions in the morning like the employees would.

They do all the hard lifting, moving around… carrying things, etc… whilst the employee stays more or less in the same position and ensuring a) the work being done is right, b) packed correctly or in a certain way, because it contains variability from pack to pack… and c) able to provide further or new instructions to the robots.

So, is this the future?

I think so. In fact, I reckon so. We’ll see more and more manual tasks being completed by robotos. Then as AI (Artifical Intelligence) is ever so evolving… we’ll see some of the tasks that require variation, not needing humans.

Enjoy the time with your current co-worker… not sure, if the robots will laugh at your jokes.

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Sharing my thoughts at NTU…

I used to talk at many conferences… but I’ll be totally honest, I don’t have much time now. Hence why I tend to share a lot of my thoughts on this blog.

However, I’ve been tempted to come and talk with some friends at the Nottingham Trent University on Wednesday 13th June.

That’s right – I did say friends… A good friend of mine, Shane Matthews will be flying in from the States.

For those wondering who Shane Matthews is… well, a) he’s a good friend of mine who resides in Atlanta, GA… b) invented the Nerf Gun and c) has a lab at Georgia Tech where he’s always working on something quite unreal!

Yep… point b), he co-founded/invented the nerf gun!! – It was many many moons ago… he had a few ideas… went through a few iterations… and if I carry on telling the story, I’ll spoil it for those coming to hear him.

Along with Shane, is another friend of mine, Leigh. Leigh Davidson didn’t invent anything… however, he’s one of the most knowledgeable guys around who knows everything there is about Augmented Reality.

So much so… he used to work for an AR startup, which got sold for $40m!!!

He’s a busy chap, but taking time out of this diary to come and talk to folk about AR and his experience.

There’ll also be Andrea, who works for Fujitsu… sharing her thoughts on Account based marketing – as she knows a thing or two about marketing!

So… looks like to be a fabulous event! – I believe there’s a few tickets & spaces remaining… interested in coming? – then register yourself and either  drive up the M1… fly into East Midlands… catch the train to Nottingham… and immerse yourself into what will truly be… a wonderful afternoon.

Oh, here’s a link to the event – https://www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us/events/events/2018/06/ignite-your-innovation go on… ignite, your innovation!

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Bal, what TV should I buy?

I’m often asked… and rightly so, as I’m a bit of a tech person… what TV should I get Bal?

That’s a great question.

My answer used to be, how big is your room… now it’s more like, what is it you want to watch?

Our behaviours are changing… due to technology! –  We’re watching less TV… you probably knew that, right? – we’re watching more YouTube on our tablets, catching up on episodes via our phones and the short video clips via social media channels such as Facebook.

So, what you’re saying is… I don’t need a new TV Bal?

Well… depends how old your current one is… but ignoring that fact, and based on you asking me… I’m going to say Yes. Yes you do. Yes you do need a new TV.

Why?

Well… whilst it’s great watching clips and short videos on your phone or tablet…. Isn’t it great to watch a film every now and again on a larger screen? What about some sports…. maybe a game of football in 4K? If you have sky sports… you could go multi-screen! Flick between matches and games on the same channel!

Now…. Back to your original question… which TV should I get.

Simple.

Smart. 4K. TV. That’s all you really need. Size of the TV depends on how big your room is.

Now, whilst I won’t go into specific makes and models… because you get what you pay for. If you want more than the standard 2 HDMI ports…. You’ll have to pay more. If you want something with good quality sound… then you’ll have to pay more.

You want it to be SMART – so it connects to your Internet, and you can watch films via your Netflix or other such account… and there’s so much more you can do (you can still watch those YouTube videos without straining your neck at a 45degree angle downwards.

4K – so the quality is there. There is truly a huge difference between HD and 4K.

Now, this is relevant for today.

I’ve seen 8K and was blown away.

But you don’t need anything like that for the moment.

You can pick up a half decent Smart 4K TV 49” for around the £350 mark.

Yes there’s deals and offers – and you can find them cheaper (you can also find them more expensive) – but that’s the approx. price you should be looking at to pay.

You can go fancy, and get a curved one. Is it worth it – the jury’s out on that one.

You could improve sound by getting a sound bar. I would recommend this. Most new TV’s have an optical port – for you to plug your soundbar into. Fast becoming a home cinema.

So… whilst I was unable to answer your original question of what TV… I hope I’ve provided some guidance… to what… and to how much….

I once bought one of my TV’s when I was shopping at Tesco…. no joke! – I went in to buy some Milk and cookies (essentials for bedtime)… and I saw a TV, at a great price. So, like any normal person, I put my basket down, opened Google… did a quick search on the internet for the best price for that TV… had a quick look at the reviews…. everything seemed fairly positive.. for the price.. and this in-store price was alot cheaper than any on-line price, so I ditched the basket and picked myself a trolley and a TV.

There’s various sites such as – trustedreviews.com and expertreviews.co.uk –  that can show you pro’s and con’s of each latest TV and the Top 10 TV deals.

So, whilst we are watching less TV… it’s still a nice box in the corner… ok, not a box anymore… still a nice flat (or curved) display, in the corner (or on the wall) that will allow you and the family… friends… to come together and enjoy.

It’s not going anywhere fast…. Unlike computers…