Why people go for trekking
Mon20Nov17
"So why do people go for treks?
Why do they risk their lives to conquer an unseen mountain?
Just for the sake of victory?
To prove that they can achieve anything or is it just a healthier time pass than watching a movie on a weekend?
Those are hardly the reasons. Treks transform you.
You come to know yourself but not by looking within, it is by loosing yourself.
On a trek you hardly remember who you are. You hardly remember what you do in the city for a living. You for some time let go of all the people associated with you. On a deeper level your basic characteristic traits do not matter. All your regrets and your achievements go hide deep in your backpack.
The mountain does not care whether you are a CEO of a multinational or a local sherpa. After walking for sometime in nature you loose your identity and become one with the mountains.
You are no longer the insecure feeble stubborn human being. You are one with the wind. You are one with the mist. You are the birds. You are the greens. You are the freshness. You are alive.
Somehow nothing else matters, your work, your relationships, nothing. All that matters is the next step. It could give you a firm footing and confidence to move ahead or it can lead you to a fifty foot fall.
In that decisive moment you are alive. More alive than ever.
That’s when you completely lose yourself and realize who you truly are.
Each moment reveals newer potentials. You swim across unknown waters of your soul.
Through falling you realize that you have the strength to get up.
Through bruising you realize that you have the power to be healed.
Through being alone you realize your own freedom.
In the everyday routine of life, all of us forget who we truly are. In fact being on a trek is one of the very few times when we actually remember!"
Trekker
Most business leaders get up early. This trait was common to 17 CEOs surveyed by Jim Citrin at Yahoo! Finance a few years ago. And it’s a trait we expect from CEOs.
They are go-getters who want to start the day before their peers and competitors, who want to work long hours and have enough time for their personal life too.
Many function unbelievably well on little sleep. Others may not function well but are driven by the stress of running a company to get up anyway.
We identified a bunch of successful people who get up early. Let us know who we missed.
General Motors’ CEO Dan Akerson
GM website
Akerson told the AP he will “rarely sleep past 4:30 or 5,” waking up so he can talk to GM Asia before it gets too late. He calls it the best job he’s ever had: “It’s complex and interesting and exciting.” Sadly, he also describes having “a lot of sleepless nights.” At least they aren’t long sleepless nights.
Virgin America CEO David Cush
Getty Images
Cush described his morning routine to the AP: Wakes up at 4:15 a.m., sends emails, calls business associates on the East Coast, and that’s before listening to Dallas sports radio, reading the paper and hitting the bike at the gym.
Apple CEO Tim Cook
Cook is known for getting up and sending out company emails at 4:30 in the morning, according to Gawker’s Ryan Tate. By 5 AM he can be found in the gym. And he works late too, priding himself on being the first in the office and the last out.
Disney CEO Robert Iger
Business Insider
Iger told the New York Times he gets up at “4:30 every morning.” He takes the quiet time to do a number of things, claiming to read the papers, exercise, listen to music, look at email and watch TV all at once. Even though it’s quiet time, he’s “already multitasking.”
Hain Celestial Group CEO Irwin Simon
AP Images
Simon accomplishes more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day. He wakes up 5 a.m., going through emails and calling operations in Europe and Asia. He also prays, walks the dog and exercises before his kids wake up. He arrives at his office in Long Island usually after squeezing in a breakfast meeting in Manhattan as well.
Former Peugeot GM Jean-Martin Folz
AP Images
Now headed to the board of Eutelsat Communications, the former head of Peugeot was said to catch the 4 a.m. train from Dijon to Paris, and would finish up a briefing paper within minutes of arriving to his office at 7 a.m. According to The Observer, Folz also had his Renault Espace converted into an office so he could work while commuting.
Former Oxygen Channel CEO Gerry Laybourne
Getty Images
The founder of Oxygen is awake by 6 a.m. and out of the house a half hour later. If you get up early enough she might even take you under her wing, she tells Yahoo! Finance: “Once or twice a week, I go for a walk in Central Park with a young person seeking my advice. This is my way of helping bring along the next generation. And if someone is up early in the morning then they are serious about life. I can’t take time at the office to do this, but doing it in the morning allows me to get exercise and stay connected with young people at the same time.”
Aurora Fashions CEO Mike Shearwood
As head of one of the UK’s trendiest fashion companies, Shearwood’s day starts early. Shearwood wakes up at 5 a.m. in order to travel from Nottingham to London in time for a 7:45 arrival. He loves the long commute both ways: “I catch up on emails and work, as well as speaking to teams on the phone.”
Christie’s CEO Steve Murphy
The former head of publishing company Rodale turns to poet William Blake for inspiration on how to start his day: “‘Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night.’ This has made a huge difference in my life.” Thinking and planning in the morning makes Murphy — in his words — strategic and proactive, rather than reactive.
New Jersey Nets CEO Brett Yormark
The youngest CEO in the NBA told SellingPower that he gets up at 3:30 in the morning in order to get to the office by 4:30. From there, he works out and sends motivational emails to his team. He takes it easy on the weekends, arriving at the office by 7 a.m. instead.
Brooklyn Industries CEO Lexy Funk
The artistic co-founder of the Brooklyn-based clothing and bag shop told the Huffington Post that her routine starts early: “I usually wake up around 4 a.m.” From there, the dilemma of whether to read and bore herself back to sleep or get on her BlackBerry begins. Once online, she’s answering emails and talking to people from Brooklyn Industries.
Cedar Fair Entertainment CEO Matt Ouimet
Getty Images
The former president of Starwood Hotels and CFO of Disney just became the CEO of a company that runs amusement parks. Referring to work as “game time,” according to Yahoo Finance, Ouimet likes to get to the office early, waking up at 5:30 in order to get out of the house by 6 a.m.
Saban Capital CEO Haim Saban
Getty Images
As head of the Saban Capital Group, this Egyptian-born Israeli-American billionaire has his first cup of coffee at 6:02 a.m. and begins work from there. He works for an hour before exercising for 75 minutes to really start his day, according to Yahoo Finance.
Unilever CEO Paul Polman
Getty Images
In order to stay competitive mentally and physically, the Dutch-born Polman gets up at 6 a.m. so he can run on the treadmill in his office. This also gives him time to “reflect on the work day ahead,” which is probably pretty hectic at a multinational food and detergent company.
Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior
Getty Images
Although she doesn’t run right to the office upon waking up at 4:30 a.m., Warrior spends an hour on email, reads the news, works out and gets her son ready for school. And she is still in the office by 8:30 at the latest, according to Yahoo Finance. She was formerly the CTO of Motorola, and has been one of the most highly acclaimed women in business over the course of her career.
Former PepsiCo CEO Steve Reinemund
AP Images
Now the dean of Schools of Business at Wake Forest University, the long-time head of Pepsi told Yahoo Finance that he would be out of bed at 5:30, already reading the papers. He would go through The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and The Dallas Morning News before heading to work.
Avon Products CEO Andrea Jung
Getty Images
Jung wakes up at 5 in the morning and goes to the gym before getting to her desk at 8, says Forbes.
Former Goldman Sachs and MF Global CEO Jon Corzine
Colleagues recalled to The New York Times that he would be in the office by 6 a.m., even after taking a five mile run in the morning. Yet he was still the last person to leave in the evenings.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz
Schultz starts his day with a workout, which is usually a bike ride with his wife, but still gets to the office by 6 a.m., according to Portfolio.com. There must be something about Starbucks that makes people want to do this, as president Michelle Gass wakes up at 4:30 every morning to go running, and has done so for 15 years.
Must be all the coffee.
Former PayPal and OpenTable head Jeff Jordan
AP Images
The recently-resigned CEO of OpenTable, Jordan told The New York Times that he is in the office by 5 a.m., and doesn’t leave until after 7 p.m. However, as Jordan admits, these long hours played a role in his departure from PayPal.
Former presidents George HW Bush and George W Bush
AP
The first Bush would get up at 4 a.m., go running, be in the office by 6 a.m. and stay up until 2 a.m. “He was a horror,” said a former White House nurse who had to try to keep up with him. The second Bush kept a similar schedule, going to the office by 6:45 a.m. and often holding meetings at this ripe hour, according to The NYT.
So did W. Bush’s cabinet. Colin Powell put in “perfectly appalling” hours, arriving to the office at 6 a.m., and not leaving until after 7 p.m., according to his former students. Condoleeza Rice woke up every day at 4:30 in the morning in order to get to the gym before work.
Benjamin Franklin
A major figure of the American Enlightenment and a Founding Father of the United States, Franklin is credited with the saying that perhaps started this whole trend in the first place: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” He planned his routine around waking up at 5 a.m. and asking himself “What good shall I do this day?”
Originally at http://www.businessinsider.com/successful-early-risers-2012-1?op=1#ixzz1jgv1INOm
Why Steve Jobs Matters to You
Thu06Oct11
This post was written after Steve Jobs’ resignation in August; upon the news of his death, it’s worth a read.
All sorts of commentators, on this site and elsewhere, are asking all sorts of questions about the resignation of Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple, Inc. What does it mean for the company’s future? What does it means for the stock price? What does it mean for the computer industry, the music industry, and the media industry?
All fine questions, to which I would add one more: What does it mean for you? Or, to put it another way, when you see the outpouring of affection, respect, and admiration for this one leader, an outpouring of emotion that I can’t recall for the departure of any other businessperson or technologist, isn’t it natural to think about your own eventual departure, the legacy you’ll leave behind, the ways in which your career will be remembered?
Few of us have the chance to achieve 1/100th of what Steve Jobs has achieved. But all of us can look at his body of work, and the reaction to that body of work, and use it as an opportunity to ask more of ourselves as leaders and innovators with a chance to make a small positive difference for our industry, our customers, and our colleagues.
So if you want to use the end of Steve Jobs’s hands-on leadership at Apple to inspire a greater commitment to leadership by you, I’d suggest that you ask these five simple questions — questions that define what it means to be a high-impact leader today.
1. Why should great people want to work with you? Steve Jobs surrounded himself with remarkably talented designers, retailers, and engineers because he understood that the most talented performers aren’t motivated primarily by money or status. Great people want to work on exciting projects. Great people want to feel like impact players. Put simply, great people want to feel like they’re part of something greater than themselves — they want to become, to use a favorite Jobs phrase, “insanely great.”
2. Do you know a great person when you see one? It’s a lot easier to be the right kind of leader if you’re running a team or department filled with the right kind of people. Indeed, as I reflect on the best workplaces I’ve visited, I’ve come to appreciate how much time and energy leaders spend on who gets to be there. These workplaces may feel different, but the organizing principle is the same: When it comes to evaluating talent, character counts for as much as credentials. Do you know what makes your star performers tick — and how to find more performers who share those attributes? Steve Jobs was as picky about the people he let into Apple as he was about the features that went into Apple’s products.
3. Can you find great people who aren’t looking for you? It’s a common-sense insight that’s commonly forgotten: The most talented performers tend to be in jobs they like, working with people they enjoy, on projects that keep them challenged. So leaders who are content to fill their organizations with people actively looking for jobs risk attracting malcontents and mediocre performers. The trick is to win over so-called “passive” jobseekers. These people may be outside your company, or they may be in a different department from inside your company, but they won’t work for you unless you work hard to persuade them to join. The legacy and personal presence of Steve Jobs made him an unparalleled recruiter.
4. Are you great at teaching great people how your team or company works and wins? Even the most highly focused specialists (software programmers, graphic designers, marketing wizards) are at their best when they appreciate how the whole business operates. That’s partly a matter of sharing financial statements: Can every person learn how to think like a businessperson? But it’s mainly a matter of shared understanding: Can smart people work on making everyone else in the organization smarter about the business? Does everyone understand what really matters, what’s non-negotiable, what makes or breaks the company? Nobody was better than Steve Jobs at communicating the mission of the enterprise.
5. Are you as tough on yourself as you are on your people? There’s no question that talented and ambitious young people have high expectations — for themselves, for their team or company, for their colleagues. Which is why they can be so tough on their leaders. The ultimate challenge for leaders is to share those same lofty expectations for their own behavior. One of my favorite HR gurus, John Sullivan of San Francisco State University, says it best: “Stars don’t work for idiots.” Steve Jobs was a famously tough and exacting boss. But my sense is that people responded to his perfectionist impulses because he was as tough on himself as he was on everyone around him.
You don’t have to aspire to be the next Steve Jobs to learn some lessons from his one-of-a-kind career. Perhaps that can be his greatest legacy of all — a generation of leaders who think bigger and aim higher because of what he achieved.
[William C. Taylor is cofounder of Fast Company magazine and author of Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself, published January 4, 2011.]
Originally at http://blogs.hbr.org/taylor/2011/08/why_steve_jobs_matters_to_you.html
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