Problems with Passion - From Study Hacks

Cal Newport - author of Study Hacks has a very interesting take on Passionate Jobs

Money quote

(+)Passion is generated by extended exposure to something that becomes an important part of your life. It’s not some magic score assigned to each job that describes, with great accuracy, how happy you’ll immediately become if you follow that path. (In reality, it’s really just a fancy word for general occupational fulfillment.)
(+)As a recent graduate, you have not yet been exposed to any job long enough for you to know what might fit well with you and lead, down the road, to the type of general fulfillment people dub passion.
(+)How, then, are you, as a newly minted graduate, supposed to identify a passion?

Thought provoking for sure ain't it!!

Preparations for B-school - Part 2 - Software - Note-taking

This is Part 2 of an ongoing series of articles - Preparations for B-School. Click to see Part 1 of the series...

Software
Your B-school education requires you to be on top of your studies, your activities and have a complete picture of what's happening around you all the time. To aid you in these tasks, there are a few software packages, both desktop and in the cloud that can aid you in this process. Today I will be concentrating on Note-taking software.

Why note-taking software?
During school times, one ingrained habit that was followed without much thought was note-taking. Students usually used a notebook for each subject. Of course in the Indian system of education, you had a myriad of notebooks to struggle through
Class notebook
Rough notebook
Assignment notebook
Project notebook
and this was for each of the subjects.

While this was a cumbersome process, it _did_ help organize the content of the class.

The premise behind note-taking software is the same as well. It's a two-fold objective -
a. Serve as a receptacle (a source and a sink if you will) for all the things you need to have for future reference
b. Help you organize the various bits of information so that retrieval would be easy

While you are more than welcome to carry notebooks to organize this thought process, I personally believe that it's redundant as you will be carrying your laptop wherever you go during the various activities. It's lighter on your back-pack and serves as a single point of reference for all your activities.

Personal note: I am organization freak and want the information that I have stored in my fingertips. Consequently, I have tried and tested most of the note-taking software that's available for the Windows, Linux and Mac platform.

Things to consider
As different people want different things from their note-taking software, I will try and keep this as generic as possible. Depending on your needs and my listing of pros-and-cons of the software packages, you might be able to hazard a useful guess =)!

1. The note-taking software should be light on the system: Over the course of 12-24 months, the amount of information you gather will be humongous. Typically note-taking software save the information in their own formats (could be text/binary). Now, this information needs to be loaded and processed every time you run the application. Consequently, the application must preferably keep it in the text format and be fast in loading the information, processing it and be light on the system resources while doing so!
2. The information should be organized easily: As the information increases, the user will typically be forced to bring in an organization method for referencing the information in the future. The application must provide taxonomic methods of organizing the information - tags. It should also preferably be indexable by various desktop searching methods (Windows Desktop Search / Google Desktop Search / Spotlight / Beagle) etc.
3. There must be an easy way to sync the information: The notes that I am taking down should be easily synced across various platforms - Windows / OS X / Linux / hand-held devices / internet. Only this would truly allow me to obtain my information anytime, anywhere.
4. It should handle various types of information: There will be various types of information that I will throwing at the application - serial numbers, passwords, web-urls, pictures, snaps, and the likes. The data should not only be seamlessly organized, it would be preferable if it will be able to store it properly as well

The Contenders
Let's have a look at the contenders. Taking into consideration my requirements and the packages that I have tested, here are the major contenders with platform information

1. Evernote (Windows/Mac/Handheld(soon)/Cloud)
2. Yojimbo (Mac)
3. Microsoft OneNote(Windows)

Now, let's evaluate each of them

1. Evernote Platforms - Windows, Mac, Handheld, Cloud (Internet)
One of the strongest note-taking / personal information holding package that I have seen. Instead of providing a review here, what I will do is give you a quick and dirty glance of its pros and cons and provide links to the reviews as footnotes!

Pros:
+ Multi platform
+ Can store images as well as text
+ Has a very user-friendly Clipper functionality
+ Synchronizes with the cloud - so the information is truly available anytime anywhere
+ Has the image-text recognition capability, which is phenomenally useful!

Cons:
- It's still in Beta (and has some associated bugs)
- The minute it goes out of Beta, it could move into a paid platform
- Tags (if used excessively) can be hell to manage
- No dedicated types - Serial Numbers, Passwords, etc
- Limited number of beta invites
- No way to index the information (only way to search is via the application)
- Cannot handle .pdfs, .docs, and such information types

Update (2008-May-12): With the latest version of Evernote (1.1.0) you can manage .pdfs as notes. Furthermore, Spotlight also indexes all the note contents!! (Yay!! This rocks)!!

2. Yojimbo Platforms - Mac only
This was the be-all end-all application for information management prior to Evernote days. Furthermore, this does a beautiful job with the interface which allows intuitive running of the application and makes the usage a pleasure. What Yojimbo lacks in functionality from Evernote, is the image recognition capability. However, it more than makes up for that with its robust quality and integration with the Operating System!!

Pros:
+ Amazing integration with OS X and applications
+ Synchronization with iCal, Mail, iTunes etc
+ Intuitive, easy to use interface
+ Dedicated types of information - Serial Numbers, URLs, Images etc..
+ Amazing range of information data types - You can throw anything at it and it will store it
+ Indexable content - Spotlight can be used to search for the information stored in Yojimbo

Cons:
- No Image recognition system
- No true Windows application so there's a platform lock-in
- No synchronization mechanism other than .Mac
- $39 for a single user, $69 for 5 users

3. Microsoft OneNote Platforms - Windows Only
Part of the Office suite, Microsoft OneNote is a very professional note-taking application. It stores the notes in its proprietary format, which is non-indexable. However, it has a very rich feature-set, and a very professional interface (albeit Microsoft(y)).

Pros:
+ Uses a traditional 3-ring binder approach
+ Can take a wide variety of rich information to make up a note - text, graphics, web-pages, audio, video etc
+ Has this ability to attach scribbles to main notes (via side-notes and labels feature)
+ This is more of a note-taking application and less of an information management tool
+ Powerful sharing features in the Office eco-system

Cons:
- A copy of OneNote costs somewhere south of $100.
- Windows only
- No presence in the cloud (Have to confirm with the Live Workspace / Mesh tho)
- Not indexable

My Take
I prefer Evernote to any other note-taking / information management software as of now because of the powerful synchronization capabilities and the slowly maturing feature-set. However, I would love it if the clients for Evernote were a bit more robust and they continue to maintain it as a freeware.

Do you have any other note-taking software which you use in class? If so, please feel free to share the information in the comments!

More software packages will be analyzed in Part 3 of Preparations for B-school

Preparations for B-school - Part 1 - Specialization, Resume, and Hardware

There are quite a few things that one needs to consider when one prepares to embark on a B-school journey. It's usually a 12-month to 24 month period of intense activity. The activities furthermore are varied and have different impacts on your life and career at the end of your education (experience ;-) ). Anyway, here are a few thoughts that I have been mulling over..

Your major / specialization
This forms a crucial part of what you will be doing in your time at the school. It's best that you are aware of the various options and the opportunities / career paths that it provides. It also determines your experience at the B-school. For e.g. a major in Consulting would also demand that you attend workshops / activities specific to the specialization. It determines the networking that you would try and put in place during your time at B-school apart from garnering as much information as possible from your professors and recruiters during career fairs etc.

Suggestions:
Read about each of the specialization your B-School provides.
Typically, your college would also provide you access to the various groups that are related to that specialization mentioning the various activities that they usually indulge in.
Vault Guides: Read about the career opportunities and the nuances of each type of career from these amazing guides. Don't forget to check out the companies who would think of hiring you and the life within that company as well. Your school would typically provide you a special code to access these guides (else you have to pay to access them legally)

Revamp your resume
The Career Management Centre (or equivalent) of your b-school is your sanctum-sanctorum for your career after your education. So, make sure you contact them ahead of time. They would need your latest resume and an idea of what you want to do after your education. So, make sure you reformat your resume to their specifications. Furthermore, also read up as to what all they want and be prepared with the necessary information.

For e.g. I have been a techie and have ~36 months of technical experience. Now, I have to formulate it with a business flare and furthermore, implement some very important tips I recently read
- Use active language
- Give specifics and activities you did than a general outline of what you did

Your IT infrastructure - Hardware
Every B-school today demands that you have a laptop and required paraphernalia which will aid your education. Now, the hardware part of it one part of it. Rahul Gaitonde has an interesting piece on the various hardware devices which would render themselves useful during your period @ a B-school and beyond here. I have a few additional information.

For the Mac enthusiasts: If you are a Mac hardware enthusiast like me, you would often find yourselves at ends with what the IT department of your B-school would usually provide you aid with. If you are not capable of solving problems yourself (with/without the aid of the net), then as much as possible, be in line with what the B-school suggests you do.

Operating System: Typically all B-schools suggest that you have a Windows version (2000/XP/Visa) as your main Operating System. Before I say what I say next, let me say that I work on both Windows machines (at work) and Linux (as an enthusiast) and OS X (as an owner of Mac hardware). If you don't understand how to get things done on your own, please install a copy of Windows visa Bootcamp.

The IT department usually have valid reasons to suggest this. Apart from the support deal they would have with the bulk-deal vendor on-campus, there may be OS specific software required as part of your course that you _have_ to run. So, unless you want to depend on the computer lab machines, install the required OS (or at least have virtualization software).

Now, for all practical purposes, you can run Windows under OS X using Virtualization software like Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion 2.0, without any serious conflicts. Else you always have the option of running Windows under Bootcamp. (I personally use Parallels as I have a license for it, but have heard some really rave reviews about VM Ware Fusion as well). My suggestion - try all 3 and use the one you are most comfortable with!!

Software: There are some more aspects I would like to discuss specific to software packages which will make your life a bit easier while going through the B-school. Please find the post soon as Part 2 of this series.

Why: Did I choose to be a T-bird?

In the year 2007, after I came back from a year in Germany, I had decided that I wanted to pursue a management degree. I had applied to a few colleges for the Fall of 2008. Before I enumerate the colleges, let me give you a briefer of my profile

My Profile
Name: Renganathan Ramamoorthy aka Pangu aka Ravi
Age: 23 years and counting...
Education: Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from SCT College of Engineering (Trivandrum, Kerala, India)
Work Experience: 34 months and going strong... with Siemens Information Systems Limited as medical imaging specialist
International Experience: A year of studies in the US and a year of working in Germany
GMAT Score: 710
TOEFL Score: 115 (iBT)

Ok, let me start with the colleges I applied to. I was absolutely ignorant of the various schools and their profiles, their mean/median GMAT score ranges and yada yada yada. This was not my cup of tea. However, I had a friend, who used to love crunching such information. In a casual conversation in one of the World MBA Tour fairs, he enlightened me with the condensed version of various institutes.

At the end of it, I had to choose
a. What did I want to do post an MBA?
b. What major/specialization am I to choose that will help me in my career post MBA?
c. Keeping points (a) and (b) in mind, which colleges am I applying to?

Premise: I love technology and everything to do with it. I realized (after 2-3 months of deliberation) that I wanted to be a consultant as I love variety in my work. I also realized that I loved working in the global arena as I love interacting with people from various regions, places and culture! I further realized that I also would love brand management/marketing as a potential backer up for my consulting position.

So, out of this, the "global" aspect of it was the most important for me. This made me choose colleges that have
a. A globally focused curriculum
b. Ability to customize my program
c. Provided enough opportunity post-MBA to follow my dream

Let's not get into my short-term and long-term goals, which I shall hopefully introduce later!

Anyway, I had chosen the following colleges to apply to
1. Thunderbird School of Global Management (Ranked #1 for their international focus)
2. Darden School of Business (For their innovative curriculum and tremendous force and focus to mould the students into tomorrow's leaders)
3. Indian School of Business (Phenomenal ROI and 1 year and most importantly @ home ground)
4. SP Jain - which I applied via CAT

I received an admission from Thunderbird and SP Jain. Now, the choice was between spending ~ 2000000INR and 285000INR. Thunderbird had also offered me a 50% scholarship for the tuition. This put me in a dilemma. Here I had on one hand, a sure shot situation of an MBA with an extremely high ROI (SP Jain is one of the premier institutes of India and is consistently ranked in the Top-10 B schools of India). On the other, I had an offer from a B-school heralded world over as #1 for its International Management course, but I have to invest more than 10 times what I would pay for SP Jain and has a pretty poor reputation when it comes to placement (according to the rankings).

It's a tough call based on risk, recognition of your education and the opportunities which lie ahead of you in the future, apart from the cliched ROI, and affordability!

The Decision
It was not a simple decision! However, what finally rounded up my decision were
1. Conversations with Alums from Indian B-Schools and Thunderbird Alums
2. The innate adventurous spirit (which people seem to think I have)

The first point was very important. I spoke to about 4 different friends of mine (All Business graduates from 4 different MBA Schools in India). They had really good reviews about their alma-maters and also an honest opinion about what they provide. However, all four of them wanted to pursue a specialized MBA from a foreign university after garnering some work-experience. They claimed that the avenue of opportunities, especially with this pattern of education is phenomenal. They claimed that the exposure you get studying with people from diverse backgrounds (origin, work-experience, language etc) is something that you can't really even simulate within an Indian MBA. That was the single most-crucial aspect that _I_ wanted from an MBA as well. I wanted to gain from the class as much as I had to give it. (Thunderbird 1 - SP Jain 0)

More in the coming days!!!