Krishna Rao

A Fool’s Hope

  • What the frog – in which I name a frog

    What the frog – in which I name a frog

    One of the fun-nest productivity techniques I have come across is called ‘Eat the Frog’, which takes off from a quote that’s often attributed to Mark Twain.

    “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

    (Note: This does sound like something Mark Twain would say. But I haven’t found any mention of where he said or wrote this.)

    Eating a live frog is perhaps one of the most disgusting things you can do. (Unless, of course, you are a snake, and you find frogs delicious. But then again, you also eat rats. So, forgive me if I don’t take tips on fine dining from you.) Anyway, according to ‘Eat the Frog’, you do the thing that feels as disgusting or difficult as eating a frog as soon as you can in the day.

    The question, of course, is what is the frog in your life.

    The frog might take many different shapes: Going a daily run, attending a class that’ll level up your skills, setting up a meditation practice, or ploughing your way through the first draft of your novel.

    So, you take this action every day as soon as possible – preferably first thing in the morning.

    But here’s the thing – going on a run is not difficult. Nor is typing words on the keyboard or attending an online class. In other words, the act of running or meditating or writing is not the frog.

    The frog is a different beast altogether. In my sightings, the frog takes the form of an icky, sludgy reluctance to do the things that you swore were important to you.

    In his book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield calls it ‘The Resistance’. 

    It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

    The artist Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal) gives it a more eloquent name, ‘The Blerch‘. 

    The Blerch represents all forms of gluttony, apathy, and indifference that plague my life. 

    I have named the frog Ick-a-lot. I have also knighted him because he has won countless battles with Reason and Better Sense. So my frog is Sir Ick-a-lot.

    Why am I spending so many words naming the frog?

    1. It’s cool to name things – especially frogs.
    2. Just as it is essential to clarify what is truly important to me, I believe it is essential to clearly identify what is holding me back from doing what I have deemed important to me. 

    Okay, so now I have named the frog and redefined what it is. What next? 

    Initially, I thought, “Well, now that I have identified the enemy, I need to quell it – that is, prevent it from existing – before doing all the things that are important to me.”

    That strategy failed spectacularly. Turns out the expectation that I will one day defeat the frog and then never have to feel its icky sludgy-ness IS the frog.

    The trick is to understand that the frog is a part of you forever. Importantly, you can do the things that are important to you despite this.

    • I accept that it will suck to put in the work sometimes.
      (Do the work even if you don’t feel like it.)
    • I accept that the results will not meet my lofty standards.
      (Measure effort, not results.)
    • I accept that I will fail along the way.
      (Forgive yourself when you slip up and be ready for battle the next day.)

    This approach is allowing me to push along and move forward. It turns out Sir Ick-a-lot is not my friend. But I don’t have to make him my enemy either.

  • The simplest thing you can do

    The simplest thing you can do

    I was frozen with anxiety. This was strange because the decision I had to make was not life-changing or binding. I just had to choose a newsletter service. I wasn’t going to pay any money for it – not immediately any way – and switching to some other service would have been fairly easy. But one part of my mind – the dude in charge of the panic button – would tell you a different story. He acted like my life depended on it. As though the decision I took would change my life irreversibly. As though my success as a blogger would depend entirely on whether I got this decision right. 

    I was mindful enough to know panic dude had gone off into a spiral. The realisation did not immediately help break the cycle of thought and emotion. But it gave me enough space to ask, “Where is the danger?” This is a question I often ask to break out of anxiety. Because usually – though not always – there is no danger. 

    I asked myself what I could do in this moment to move. Just a little bit. Let it be imperfect. Just move.

    Here was the answer: Do the simplest thing even if it is a mistake. 

    It worked. I signed up for an email service, played around with its settings on WordPress, and my newsletter was ready to get published.

    Why did this approach work? First, I allowed myself to make a mistake. In other words, I gave myself the permission to learn by taking action. Second, by committing to doing the simplest thing, I had made things, well, simple.

    I am not sure if I have chosen the “best” newsletter service. I am not sure if it will fulfill all my needs in the months to come. I have simply taken action. I am open to learning. Most importantly I am set to ship my work.

  • What’s your core skillset?

    What’s your core skillset?

    It’s easier than ever before to create and publish content. But this also brings in new demands that creators of the past seldom had to deal with. Take standup comedians. Earlier, they would have to write their sets, revise them, perform, and then revise some more. This was their core skill set. They would work their way up from ‘Open Mics’, to performing at smaller venues, then bigger venues. If they became popular enough, they could standalone shows in auditoriums, go on tours, and do corporate shows. 

    Then came YouTube. Now, standup comedians can reach millions of people relatively quickly. However, even though they’ll hire a crew, standup comedians need to have enough understanding to answer questions like, ‘3-cam setup or 4-cam?’, ‘Shoot in 4K or HD?’. Once the video is ready, they need to take calls like  ‘What thumbnail design will attract user attention?’, ‘What’s the best time to upload the video on YouTube?’, ‘What hashtags will push the views?’.

    Digital distribution channels like YouTube and Instagram are also gigantic content machines. You have to constantly feed it and do things that please their almighty algorithm that will get you organic views. You have to know what’s trending in order to ride the what’s-popular wave.

    The problem is that in the vast ocean of things-to-do-to-win-on-the-internet, it is very easy to forget what makes for good writing/music/standup set/artwork in the first place. 

    As a writer, I get better by sitting down each day and put down words on the screen. 

    I am not saying that understanding technology, knowing the trends, defining your audience, or improving production value is not important. I am simply saying that they are secondary or tertiary to your core skill set. Because nothing will work for me if I don’t produce words worth reading.

  • Writing IS learning

    Writing IS learning

    I was a journalist for about nine years. I have been writing for non-fiction TV and digital videos for the past eight years. However, I am a novice when it comes to fiction writing.

    I have written a bunch of short stories in a burst of inspiration. I have started and abandoned a couple of novels. I am currently developing what I hope will be a comic book. Oh, and I have another grand ficitonal story building up inside my head.

    I guess two questions hold me back:

    • First, am I capable of writing a book? 
    • Second, am I really capable of writing a book?

    So, I attend workshops, read articles on websites for authors, and read books on the art of writing. I learn a lot. But there is so much more left to learn! And so, feeling fairly lost, I postponed the actual act of writing.

    Recently, an obvious truth smacked me right in the face. You know, the kind that makes you doubt the intelligence that supposedly distinguishes me from apes.

    And the truth is this: Writing IS learning. 

    Think about it. You don’t train for a marathon by reading books. Or show your kids YouTube videos and expect them to start tying shoelaces. Or cook a gourmet meal by liking a video on Instagram. Sure, reading books, watching videos, and getting inspired by chefs help – but it is only by taking action that we learn. We need to make a mess, get hurt. Pull a muscle. Fall on your face because the laces came undone. Undercook that pasta. 

    Why this didn’t occur to me earlier, I will never know. But now that it has, I am going to take a different mental posture to my fiction writing. Each day, I will sit down to write with the intention of learning to write. I’m not here to create a masterpiece. I’m here simply to learn… and to create a masterpiece 😝.

  • Ten-minute writes

    Ten-minute writes

    I recently decided to publish something every day. I took this decision after attending Akimbo’s The Creative’s Workshop. During the workshop, we published what we called ‘Dailies’. It was part of the workshop’s central teachings – creative people must publish frequently.

    It seemed like a grand plan – for about one day. Then something happened. It might have happened to you too. I call it ‘Life’.

    Deadlines of three major projects suddenly turned up in a space of a couple of days. I also had to accompany my dad for minor surgery, and stay with him during recovery. There is no way I could add blogging to the mix, right? Right?

    So, in a moment of inspiration (or desperation), I came up with the idea of 10-minute writes. I would choose simpler thoughts that could be put down on paper in just 10 minutes. Because 10 minutes of writing feels doable even on the busiest of days.

    As I type this, it’s already 12 minutes on the clock. (I like to cheat.) Because 10 is an arbitrary number. The trick is to simply open the laptop and get typing.

    • Also read: The Unit of Effort
      A post in which I talk about why I use ‘time spent’ as a measure of progress for my more ambitious and long-term creative projects.

  • The great villains

    Science fiction and fantasy stories have villains with epic ambitions. They want absolute power. They never want to die. They want to end all life. They want to become the ultimate being in all universe. That explains why they hatch elaborate plans, activate minions – usually millions of them – building superweapons and cross every line of decency and morality.  

    But why does Voldemort (Harry Potter) never want to die? Why does Sauron (Lord of the Rings) want to rule over everything? Why does Malekith (Thor: Dark World) want to end light (and bring eternal night)? Not every SFF book/comic/film delves into the why behind the why. And if they do, it’s usually not very well developed. 

    There are notable exceptions, of course. While Thanos starts off as the “Mad Titan” in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, by the time we come to ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, his motivations are made clear. He wants the power of the infinity stones because he wants to kill half of all life in one finger snap. And he wants to end half of all life in the universe because worlds can no longer support such large populations. He has seen his own world destroyed. 

    This reasoning generates a certain level of understanding from the audience. The heroes themselves acknowledge this when Captain America tells a demotivated Black Widow that he saw a pod of whales in the Hudson.

    The machines in The Matrix series have a great motivation to keep the humans subjugated. Their survival depends on the humans sleeping! 

    I am not saying stories with villains whose true motivations are not explored don’t work. (Sauron is a badass – even if we don’t quite know why he wants to rule over all life on Middle-Earth.) But when a storyteller shows why evil is evil, then it adds an interesting layer that helps see the antagonist’s point of view.

  • The unit of effort

    The unit of effort

    Many meaningful goals require sustained, long-term effort, with little to no short-term results. Think about training for a marathon, setting up your own art show, losing weight, becoming a professional YouTuber, or, as in my case, writing a novel. (Not all meaningful goals are long, of course. Eating a cup of dark chocolate sundae is deeply meaningful, satisfying, and requires a short trip to the ice cream shop.) 

    Think of it this way. Someone tells you about a path that takes you to a beautiful destination. But the path itself is long. (No clue how long.) It has many twists and turns. It is deserted. The scenery is bleak on most days (though you might get flashes of stunning landscape now and again). There are no food stalls or coffee shops along the way (so no dark chocolate sundaes). And there is no GPS.  

    Sure you might start on the path and stay on it for a few days. But pretty soon you grow weary of it. You are scared, alone, and worst of all, bored. The destination is nowhere in sight! Inside you, a 6-year-old is crying out, “Are we there yet!” 

    In order to stick to the path, most of us need to feel motivated – we need to feel like we are making progress. One year – or even one month – is too long a time for us to wait for this cue. 

    In other words, we need to feel like we are making progress before the weighing scale shifts or before the first draft of the novel is written. The more frequently we receive this cue, the higher the chance we stay motivated. Because without motivation, we will fall back to our old patterns. (You know, take the exit at Netflix junction.)

    But what measure should we choose as feedback? Writers often use ‘Daily Word Count’ as a measure of progress. Writing 500 or 1000 words constitutes progress and ‘success’ for the day. 

    I have tried this and it has not worked for me. Because there were days when the words flowed and I managed to put down 500 words on the page. But there were also days when I stared at the screen for an hour and generated a measly 200 words. On those days – that is, on most days – I felt like I had failed.

    There is nothing wrong with receiving such negative feedback per se, but if you don’t hit the daily goals repeatedly, the message that goes out is, “You probably can’t do this.” If (or when) this happens it is likely you will step off the path. 

    After trying and failing with the ‘Daily Word Count’, I felt I needed a different way to measure progress. 

    For me, that measure is time-spent. Every time I sit down to write my novel, I start the timer for the project, on a time-tracking tool called Toggl. My goal is to work on my novel for 25 minutes every day. It doesn’t matter if I stare at the screen for 20 minutes and write for five. It doesn’t even matter if I sit there stewing in frustration without typing a word. As long as I spend 25 minutes (or even 15, because I, well, cheat), I feel like I have ‘worked on my novel’ for the day.   

    I know this may not sound convincing to many people. This may feel like a cop-out – an exercise in mediocrity. My own mind is first to voice such doubts. But you know what? I don’t care. All I want right now is to stick to the path. And right now, seeing that I am spending some time developing the novel is helping me stick to it. I have put words on the page, come up with (what I think are) interesting world rules.  
    ‘Time spent’ is like a milestone that comes alive once in a day to give me pat on the back and whisper words of encouragement. It’s the succour I need on the stark, lonely path.

  • You will have regrets. And that’s okay

    You will have regrets. And that’s okay

    Fear comes in all kinds of flavours. One flavour that plays an important part in our lives – or at least in my life – is the fear of having regrets. We try our best to avoid making choices that we will regret later in life.

    This makes sense. An executive who works weekends misses out on time spent with friends and family. Closer to or after retirement this individual may feel regret – because there are no more deadlines to pursue and your neglected relationships lie in a ditch. 

    Now, let’s come back to the present. Our executive is, say, 35. Why is he working all the time? Perhaps his priority is to earn a lot of money because he is desperate to have financial security. Maybe he is really good at his job and wants to grow creatively and financially.

    In order to avoid regrets, this guy decides to take his weekends off to spend more time with his family. This choice does mean he won’t get enough work done. It might slow his career growth. Now, there is fear that he might regret not pushing himself enough to fulfill his potential.

    In the present moment, either choice might lead to regret later in life.

    Afraid of this our man pushes himself hard during the week. He tries to do well at work, spend time with family, nurture his hobbies, manage a side-hustle, and show up at the gym to maintain his fitness. Do you see where I am going with this?

    Without the acceptance that there are some things we simply won’t be able to accommodate in our limited lives, every choice will lead to regret. We can cultivate this acceptance by first making space for some regrets in our lives. We don’t try to do it all. We prioritise.

    Regrets indicate that we have lived a life where we made choices. And that the self who is making choices is imperfect (and it’s okay if he is imperfect). That he has simply made the best possible choice as per his current understanding of life.

  • The hidden social lives of giraffes

    The hidden social lives of giraffes

    Nature has many deliciously weird children. Take the giraffes. They stand on six-feet tall legs. They eat with mouths that are mounted on six-feet tall necks. And all this for what? Eat leaves on trees? The male giraffes do what males of any specie do with long appendages – have wicked fights. This is called – wait for it – necking. And don’t even get me started on their tongue!

    https://giphy.com/gifs/funny-wtf-ZkiIapyGO0u6Q
    Nothing to see here. Just two bros necking!

    However, one aspect of their lives which is downright boring is their social structure. Giraffes were considered aloof, without forming strong bonds that are seen in other African large mammals like elephants or lions – or so researchers thought until 2000.

    Over the past couple of decades evidence is mounting in favour of giraffes having intricate social interactions. This year Zoe Muller and Stephan Harris from the University of Bristol released a paper that reviewed hundreds of giraffe studies. The paper summarises fascinating aspects of giraffes’s social lives.

    So why did biologists fail to notice these patterns earlier? Giraffes, after all, aren’t really hard to spot. As the New York Times reports, giraffe don’t communicate in ways that are obvious to humans. However, the use of digital cameras and spot pattern tracking is allowing researchers to make new connections that’s allowing us to uncover new behaviours.

    Muller told the New York Times that this latest paper sets the stage for further research. For instance, female giraffes live beyond their child-bearing years. This is not common in the animal world. The hypothesis is that older females help with child-rearing – which again hints at giraffes having advanced social protocols.

    So giraffes aren’t the social wallflowers we presumed them to be. Next time you are having a party, do send an invite to giraffes. But be warned, they may well bring their friends along, and they aren’t above necking in the open.

  • Coffee adulterant or a Dickens favourite? It’s time to give chicory pride of place

    Coffee adulterant or a Dickens favourite? It’s time to give chicory pride of place

    Chicory is the step-child in the universe of coffee purism. Some purists may react by saying that the Robusta bean is the step-child (more on this later) – which, would make chicory the dark sheep of the coffee universe? At this point, we would all agree that one of the many roads to hell is paved with labored metaphors and labels.

    Suffice to say that here in India chicory is somewhat controversial. You feel like you need to look down upon it to be considered a person with good tastes – but damn does it make for a delicious cup of coffee! Think of it as Tyrion within the Lannister family. (I promise I am done with these comparisons!)

    If you’ve ever had South Indian filter coffee (SIFC) then you’ve probably already had chicory. SIFC powders that you get in the market typically are a blend of coffee and chicory powders. The percentage of chicory can vary between 5-45%. Some brands declare the ratio on the pack – but not all do.

    Growing up in a South Indian household, I was given the impression that chicory was a necessary evil – an adulterant in “pure” coffee to make the drink stronger. “We don’t buy coffee with too much chicory. Our powder has just 15% chicory,” a grand-uncle once told me, as we took a sip of coffee together.

    This skepticism has deep roots, and to understand it we must first understand a few dominant principles in the coffee world.

    A sketch of th chicory plant
    By Original book source: Prof. Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz 1885, via Wikimedia Commons

    Arabica and Robusta

    First, there are two types of coffee beans that are sold commercially in the world – Arabica and Robusta.

    Arabica beans are the premium variety. They are high on complex flavor compounds, have decent caffeine content, and lower amounts of the bad bitter compounds.

    Robusta beans are more bitter, contain fewer complex flavor compounds, but they have higher caffeine when compared to Robusta (hence, “step-child”).

    Purists have their coffee black with premium grade 100% Arabica beans. This is considered the gold standard. No one sells coffee powder made with 100% Robusta beans. (If they do I recommend you steer clear of such products – unless burnt rubber is the flavor you were going for.) However, Arabica+Robusta blends are commonly sold, and, in my opinion, make for a good cup of coffee.

    A Wartime Substitute

    While purists may tolerate Arabica+Robusta blends, chicory is considered an adulterant and downright frowned upon. There is truth to this assertion. After all, chicory is not coffee. It is a flowering plant and belongs to the dandelion family. Its fleshy white root is dug up, roasted, ground, and mixed with coffee powder to create a coffee+chicory blend.

    In Europe and in the US, people turned to chicory when war disrupted coffee supply lines. Chicory was not the only substitute experimented with. There are records of people roasting chickpeas, cereals, and vegetables like beetroot to stretch their supplies of coffee!

    In the book, Coffee and Chicory (1864), author P.L. Simmonds dedicates an entire chapter to coffee adulterants. He points out that bags of husks of peas, cobs of Indian corn, wheat, sea-biscuits and other articles, have no place in a coffee mill. In typically British fashion, Simmonds tries to be polite even as he disses on the adulterants.

    It will not be denied that the husks of peas or the cobs of maize are appropriately placed in the trough from which our pigs feed; they will even add to the delicacy and whiteness of the pork those very useful animals are intended to yield us, but they are essentially out of place in our coffee-cup 

    Chicory: An Adulterant?

    Interestingly, Simmonds doesn’t include chicory in the list of adulterants. But there are others that did. The entry on chicory in the Cyclopaedia of India And of Eastern and Southern Asia (1857) makes a reference to the Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal which states that “chicory must be regarded altogether as an adulterant”. The cyclopaedia also recommends a technique to find out if chicory is mixed with coffee. 

    The presence of chicory may be detected in coffee by putting a spoonful of coffee gently into a tumbler of clear cold water: if pure it will float on the surface; if not the chicory will separate and discolor the water as it subsides.

    However, the market didn’t seem to care. According to Simmonds, France exported 1.25 million pounds of chicory in 1835. By 1860, they were exporting 16 million pounds per year. Ironically, this huge demand led to adulteration of chicory!

    The great demand for chicory has led to extensive adulteration; first by what is called Hambro powder, which consists of roasted and ground peas, damaged corn &c. colored with Venetian red; and secondly by coffee flights , the thin membrane which separates from coffee seeds in the act of roasting. 

    Cyclopaedia of India And of Eastern and Southern Asia (page 340)

    Parsnips and turnips too were roasted and used as substitutes for chicory.

    The Counter View

    What does the demand for chicory and its subsequent adulteration tell us? Chicory may have been added to coffee grounds to increase coffee volumes while supplies were low, but it clearly added something that was pleasing to the human palate.

    According to Simmonds, the coffee-chicory mix probably had its origin in Holland, and was introduced in France at the beginning of the 19th Century. It was from there that chicory became popular.

    Of course, the French were open to more experiments – adding roasted acorn and beetroots to their coffee mix. Simmonds mentions a recently introduced drink in France called ‘cafe de betterave’. The French believed that beetroots lent their nutrients and sweetness to coffee.  The coffee+chicory mix was called ‘cafe de chicoree’.

    In The History of Coffee Including a Chapter on Chicory (1850), author William Law describes just what chicory adds to coffee.

    The truth seems to be,that Coffee is not what people call Coffee, unless a certain quantity of Chicory be prepared along with it; and it is rather remarkable that the world has been so long in getting at this fact. The Chicory seems to give body to the Coffee. It gives it also depth of colour; but that is nothing. It fortifies the quality of thinness in the Coffee, imparts that softish and pleasing aroma which makes the beverage acceptable.

    What’s The Verdict?

    This description of chicory solved a vexing puzzle in my head. Ten years ago, I wrote an article on the science of brewing the perfect cup of filter coffee. During an interview, the former head of quality control at the Coffee Board of India told me that it was possible to make a good cup of filter coffee using just Arabica beans.

    I was excited. I bought a (rather expensive) pack of coffee powder made with 100% Arabica beans. But the excitement died the moment I took the first sip. It tasted of coffee alright. But there were two problems:

    1. It was too white
    2. It was watery.

    I noticed the brew itself was watery when compared to the brew made with coffee+chicory blend. I tried varying the amount of coffee powder used. But the brew continued to be thin. Either I was wrong or 100% Arabica beans simply couldn’t yield a classic cup of SIFC.

    But as Law’s description notes, chicory adds color and “fortifies the thinness in coffee”. What this means is that chicory plays a critical role giving South Indian Filter Coffee its signature color, mouth-feel, and aroma.

    But The Argument Continues

    However, coffee planters in India vehemently disagree with this view. They fear that much of coffee sold in India is adulterated with a lot of chicory. In a 2017 article in the Deccan Chronicle, a coffee planter, GB Bhoje Gowda rued, “Adding chicory makes coffee thicker, but does nothing for its taste. Even without chicory coffee can be thicker if extra milk is added.” Further in the article, Gowda even calls for a ban on chicory.

    This position is not new. As Law notes in his book which was published in 1850, coffee planters believed that chicory was destroying their trade. Two years after Law’s book was published, chicory was indeed banned by the British government. This move was criticised by Charles Dickens in an essay titled Justice for Chicory (page 209). He advocated that chicory should not be added to coffee in secret, but openly. Dickens argued that those who had finer tastes and the money to buy premium coffee could choose to avoid chicory. However, for those who couldn’t afford to buy expensive coffee, the addition of chicory could elevate the flavour of cheaper coffee.

    We would also follow the sage advice included in the Cyclopaedia of India And of Eastern and Southern Asia, which states that roasted chicory powder should not be pre-mixed with coffee, but should rather be sold separately – leaving it up to the buyers to decide how much chicory they wish to add.

    So, now, while I do enjoy black coffee made with 100% Arabica beans using the pour-over method of brewing, I have a new respect for chicory. If you are still on the fence, you can remind yourself of the French hand in this humble ingredient’s rise in popularity. Or that chicory was championed by Charles Dickens himself!

    In other words, chicory is nothing to sniff at – and if you do, all you will experience is a pleasant aroma.