Notes from Astronaut Scott Kelly's keynote at NI-Week 2019

I had the good fortune of listening to Astronaut Scott Kelly who delivered closing keynote at NIWeek2019. The talk was so good that most senior leaders of NI that I met later (including Scott Rust) asked did I attend Kelly’s talk. I had taken some notes as he spoke and thought I’ll try summarizing it as a part of this week’s BBL newsletter. It is not structured and comes in the same order as he spoke.

Scott Kelly has spent over 500 days in International Space Center, including a trip of nearly an year as a part of experiment that NASA was doing (what happens to human bodies in space when they spend an year or so as they prepare to send people to Mars someday). He has written a book called “Endurance” highlighting his journey.

• He opened the talk with this quote

• “People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to do extraordinary things” – Edmund Hillary 

• Mantra for success:
• Set a goal, have a plan and put in hard work.
• Focus on things I can control, take risks and not be afraid to fail.
• Doing the above I’ve learnt sky is not the limit
• Childhood
• Was average in school. Could not focus on anything for long. In this era, I’d have been classified as having ADHD. Never thought being Astronaut is possible. 
• Initial and profound inspiration was my mother, who decided to become the first female police officer of their state. My dad set-up a 8ft wall for her to practice to climb and jump to the other side – one of the tough physical test as a part of admission test.
• My mother was 5.5ft and it was too much for her and no one thought she would be able do it. But she was determined and had a plan and pursued with all her might. She had broken the goal in to a series of small goals. First goal was just to jump and touch the top, and once this is done then the next goal was to hang on to it, and the next step was to do pull ups and the final step was to climb it and get over the wall.   
• This was the first time I saw the power of goal, the need for a plan and the fruits of working hard to get there.
• College
• Continued to be an average student. Ended up going to the wrong college, as in went to “this” college thinking it is “that” college – perhaps only one in the country.
• Life changing event when I read the book The Right Stuff – by Tom Wolfe. Changed the life as I figured out I’ve all the traits to become a fighter pilot, but didn’t know how to study!
• Turned myself into good student, changed majors, graduated and joined Navy.
• “How we start has no bearing on what we can become – goal, plan, hard work”
• Became a pilot, test pilot, and finally flew the F14-tomcat.
• Professional
• I failed with the first landing on the aircraft carrier and was sent back. Got options to fly bigger plane that lands on runway and not landing on ship, which would have permanently moved me away from being a fighter pilot, let alone be an Astronaut.
• Spoke to a guide and mentor who pointed out that my learning has plateaued and I was no more making small and continuous improvement. Guide/Mentor also asked me to never get comfortable even when there are failures and said you’d eventually succeed.
• I decided to take risk and asked for a re-test. Was able to land the F14 on the deck in both day and night and got inducted into Navy which paved the way to become an Astronaut eventually.

• Message
• Successful people’s trait: Ability to take risk, make mistakes and at times even willing to fail.

• We also have to make things little better all the time. Never rest on laurels.

• Compartmentalization – focus on things you can control, doing the job and ignoring everything else.
• Greatest accomplishment is knowing that I’ve done the hardest thing I never thought I’d be able to do and be around to tell the story.
• Teamwork. Spacework is a big team work, including team in ground. Anything complex can be achieved only by a team, though the person in the front might get all visibility etc. Always be a part of the team
• Leadership - Depends on the situation. Use the option that makes the most sense for a situation -  Vote. Make decision. Dictator – decide and announce. Consensus etc.,
• Diversity. Having diverse set is a strength.
• Orbital perspective: Don’t see political borders. When looked from a higher perspective, there are people, problems etc., and nothing else. We are all humans.
• If we can dream it, we can do it. If we plan, focus only on things we can control, appreciate teamwork and work hard….. Sky is NOT the limit.

There is no way I can make justice to the electrifying 60mins that just flew (“Good communication forces you to listen” – Max De Pree). I doubt whether he’d allow NI to put up his keynote in public. I’m checking around if it can be made available to just employees. In the mean time I searched youtube and you can see some videos here and here that covers most of the things he spoke (including the jokes). 

Excerpts from the book: Digital Minimalism: On Living Better with Less Technology

Excerpts from the book: Is my series where I share some highlights and notes I made while reading some book that I think is good, thought provoking and worth sharing.

Digital Minimalism: On Living Better with Less Technology

The urge to pick up our phones every few minutes has become a nervous twitch that shatters our time into shards too small to be present. In this timely book, professor Cal Newport shows us how to pair back digital distractions and live better with less technology. Introducing us to digital minimalists -- the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones or obsessively document everything they eat -- Newport reveals how to live more intentionally in our tech-saturated world. Take back control from your devices and become a digital minimalist.

• I’ve become convinced that what you need instead is a full-fledged philosophy of technology use, rooted in your deep values, that provides clear answers to the questions of what tools you should use and how you should use them and, equally important, enables you to confidently ignore everything else.
• The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking.
• Minimalists don’t mind missing out on small things; what worries them much more is diminishing the large things they already know for sure make a good life good.
• “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
• Their gamble is that intention trumps convenience—and this is a bet that seems to be paying off.
• As Kethledge and Erwin explain, however, solitude is about what’s happening in your brain, not the environment around you. Accordingly, they define it to be a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds.
• Solitude requires you to move past reacting to information created by other people and focus instead on your own thoughts and experiences—wherever you happen to be.
• Wendell Berry summarized this point more succinctly when he wrote: “We enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness.”
• The urgency we feel to always have a phone with us is exaggerated. To live permanently without these devices would be needlessly annoying, but to regularly spend a few hours away from them should give you no pause. It’s important that I convince you of this reality, as spending more time away from your phone is exactly what I’m going to ask you to do.
• I never understood the joy of watching other people play sports, can’t stand tourist attractions, don’t sit on the beach unless there’s a really big sand castle that needs to be made, [and I] don’t care about what the celebrities and politicians are doing. Instead of all this, I seem to get satisfaction only from making stuff. Or maybe a better description would be solving problems and making improvements.
• Leisure Lesson #1: Prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption.
• My core argument is that craft is a good source of high-quality leisure.
• Leisure Lesson #2: Use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world.
• Leisure Lesson #3: Seek activities that require real-world, structured social interactions.

What RamP's Reading - May'19

Digital Minimalism: Celebrated author Cal Newport offers tips and suggestions on using social media and such tools for our advantage. The urge to pick up our phones every few minutes has become a nervous twitch that shatters our time into shards too small to be present. Our addiction to tech leaves us feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Walden: At Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau reflected on simpler living in the natural world. By removing himself from the distractions of materialism, Thoreau hoped to not only improve his spiritual life but also gain a better understanding of society through solitary introspection.