privilege to be living in an era where
people understand and appreciate what an
entrepreneur does in fact people know
how to pronounce the word entrepreneur I
come from a time almost a decade back
when becoming an entrepreneur meant you
didn’t get a job out of college and you
didn’t what to do so you just started up
on your own in fact I come from a time
where I came back from the US with a
master’s in physics and that essentially
made me unemployable in this country so
I was close with what to do and people
were like if you’re clueless and you
don’t know what to do do what what rules
people do you just get an MBA I went on
set ready to be extremely humbled by
what this decade of entrepreneurship has
taught me and I figure it’s something
that we are very privileged to be living
in this time and era we’re building a
company has actually become fairly easy
relatively easier in fact getting press
having a fancy office getting the monies
getting the business idea floated having
smart people to work with you all of
that has become relatively easier than
what it was but in my admission the one
thing that has dramatically not changed
if anything has become harder it is to
build an institution where people love
to come to work hands down defining what
the cultural ethos of a start-up is
which is beyond the free lunch and the
bean bag and the foosball table which
defines the value system of a company
which defines why people enjoy working
in that setup why they look forward to
coming up to that work place every day
has been the single most hardest thing
ever in these ten years and I’ve read a
lot about this spoken to a lot of people
of course spend a lot of times with
seasoned entrepreneurs or people who
have done this
years to figure out what is it that
drives people towards success and the
question that I’ve tried to answer for
several years now is that is there a
metric that can define in a high
correlation whether the individual will
be successful not in their journey
whether as an entrepreneur or as a part
of that entrepreneurship journey or for
that matter as an individual just
professional so I go back to 60 70s
where my parents were growing up in this
country and I would argue without being
romantic and academic about it that IQ
was a pretty good indicator of success
if you were just born smart you would
get into the IITs and the IIM s and the
IAS is and because the opportunities in
this country was still limited you would
naturally have these smart people
surface up and drive most of the media
most of the decision most of the policy
and people felt that IQ would be a great
indicator of success now for someone who
had a master’s in physics having your
destiny attached to something which is
almost outside of your control
looks a little uneasy like I don’t want
to be thinking about my life as a
genetic lottery where I just happen to
be born with a certain IQ and my life
has decided just basis that so
thankfully as I was growing EQ became
this new phenomenon where people were
like oh hold on we have studied enough
people immensely successful and we found
that IQ is actually not the single
biggest determinant of success it’s
something else and we calling it EQ and
II who is not knowing who you are and
how you deal with your emotions it’s
harder than that it’s actually knowing
who the other person is and
understanding what they are going
through in a way that’s empathetic in a
way that you’re not driving judgment but
in a way that you’re trying to
understand where they’re coming from and
hopefully be able to narrate or relate
to what they’re saying now that’s a hard
skill to accomplish and anyone who is
remotely tried to do it in a managerial
capacity or even with their friends and
family would
argue that stepping yourself into
someone else’s shoe is the single
hardest thing that an individual can do
because come what may we will never ever
be able to appreciate and identify with
their exact context but that’s the
placeholder
it’s EQ and I have been now trying to
figure is there something beyond IQ and
EQ not because I want something not
because I want to create a terminology
but there’s got to be a way that people
know how to navigate in the chaos that
exists today the reason why I use the
word chaos is because today’s world is
actually getting more and more chaotic
and I don’t mean it in a bad way I mean
just as a normal law of physics the
entropic or the chaos in a universe only
increases with every incident that
happens so the world is not going to get
easier to figure for all of us if
anything is only going to get harder and
harder but added to that is this to me
fairly disturbing trend
which is the world is also constantly
designing itself to make it more and
more comfortable every single day we are
making choices or are being displayed
choices which are all about comfort
which are all about view not going into
a cognitive load or into a mode or
medium where you have to think about
things but everything is just being
served on a platter a click of a button
you want something it gets shipped you
want something to read it gets diagnosed
in a summary you want to interpret human
emotions it gets delivered in a format
or a context rather than the individual
sitting in front of you you want a great
swipe right everything is just becoming
at the very instant and everything is
designed for comfort
that’s not how humans were designed we
have been hardwired for several years
millions of them to be always watching
out for danger to be always watching out
for anything that affects us physically
or emotionally and if we find us
an era where everything does not go
through that disturbance we are not
psychologically trained in how to deal
with it but we are just Basic Instinct
why still those very same people and
that creates a dichotomy but that aside
that’s a separate conversation and I’m
very passionate about it I’d leave it
there but the second thing that is
happening is this chaos is building this
massive universe of distraction
everything around you is serving a
purpose which is only to distract you
and I’m not talking about social media
itself I’m talking about everything
that’s happening around us there is
noise pollution and there is attention
pollution there are people who are
telling you don’t pay as much attention
to what you’re doing because look at me
I’m not doing that and I want you to be
polluted by how I think about this if
you’ve gone to the gym how often do you
get disturbed by people who consistently
keep checking their phone while working
out but that’s not what people should do
if they’re dedicated I would argue that
when artists said to practice they don’t
feel that they should be distracted so
that they feel part of the world in fact
if anything they want to be away from it
but we are all consumed by it so here’s
my prediction and my prediction is that
if there is one metric that will most
certainly define an individual’s ability
to succeed beyond IQ beyond EQ is
something that I fancy Lee called
FQ and FQ is focus go siient what is
your ability to focus on something
without being distracted by anything
else and as simple as I say it it’s the
hardest thing to do because go back and
answer this question for yourself when
was the last time you had five minutes
no more than that five minutes of
absolute undivided time on a task that
you were doing no social media
no phone buzzing no Netflix no TV no
people no phones ringing not even your
own thoughts disturbing you and I’d
argue that in this room full of very
smart accomplished people they won’t be
even one of them who had this experience
in the last six months and if you if you
train yourself to get to that point you
are gold I use the word train because
that’s what we have to do it doesn’t
happen that if you want to lose weight
you just show up at the gym one fine day
walk out like you’ve never done before
and the next day you have the body that
you wanted it requires consistent
dedication and in fact I would argue it
just requires you to be consistent just
showing up every day for something that
you want to get good at will ensure that
you get good at it because just the art
of showing up is the discipline that you
want to start with and that’s true for
this level of focus as well in the 1960
70s if you told someone that I go for a
run they would possibly laugh at you
like who goes for a run like why would
you run what purpose are you softly and
now everyone’s running everyone’s
constantly thinking about what to eat
how good it looks because if course has
to be Instagram evil and all so what am
I going to do about it tomorrow am I
going to go to that gym and people are
coming up with this keto diets and these
diets and so on it’s become natural for
you to think about your health
physically and yet there is this
important
I would argue 80% of who we are which we
never have a conversation around and
that is are you mentally fit and mental
Fitness is not about being happy all the
time
that’s the wrong notion it’s about being
aware of what your emotions are just
awareness and with that awareness comes
a level of compassion I am
angry and I know it and just the fact
that you know it and you know it well
we’ll give you the strength to deal with
it you’re not going to be mad at
yourself because you’re mad at something
you will just deal with it a lot better
now we’re not having that conversation
which I argue we will in 10 years 15
years from now but here is the tip that
I’m giving you
if you want to be ahead of the curve and
in a decade be standing here telling
people
aha I told you so and I was ahead of the
curve is for you to train yourself on
how do you focus and start with the fact
of just getting comfortable with your
own self I had a friend of mine who once
went to the Vipassana 10-day course and
he came back with perhaps the most
profound wisdom that could have been
possible from that he didn’t become a
saint or a guru or this supremely calm
Zen guy but he just said I figured that
the most difficult person to live with
is your own self because when you are in
a zone where you don’t have to talk you
can’t write anything you can’t read
anything and you only left with your own
thoughts and your own breath that’s when
you realize how much you have stored
inside that you’ve never had a
conversation on so I encourage you to go
back to the time when you were a kid
when all of us were a kid and during
playtime when we were 6 months 12 months
18 months 24 pick your age there was a
time when you were completely immersed
in what you were doing
that was playtime you didn’t care about
food you didn’t care about television
you didn’t even care about mom and dad
showing up you didn’t care about
anything else you were just playing and
insanely intensely focused and bad
parenting then got in the way because
then it’s like oh it’s time for food
it’s time for you to go to do your
homework
it’s time to take a shower it’s time to
go to bed you broke that rhythm but I
today recognize as a parent of how
precious that immersion is that insanity
where you just lose everything and you
focused on that one topic one task one
agenda nothing else matters
and if you have the ability to do that
you are precious focus is the new IQ
thank you [Applause]