A common trait that can be seen in successful people like Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett is their love for reading. They grew up reading heavily and still continue to do that. Be it reading fiction, biographies and what not.
In an interview when Warren Buffett was asked how he keeps up to date with so much information coming his way he shared his love for reading. He said he spends 5 to 6 hours everyday just reading books.
Saudi Arabia is a country rich in geographical and cultural diversity. They always try to plan and build things that amaze all of us. In the year 2017, they announced the construction and set up of Qiddiya, also known as the kingdom’s entertainment city.
What is Qiddiya?
It’s one of the most popular and awaited projects of Saudi Arabia. The public investment fund of Saudi has announced plans to construct the Kingdom’s largest sports, cultural and entertainment city for the people.
It is named Qiddiya as it’s situated in Al Qiddiya, which is on the southwestern side of Riyadh. It is also planned that approximately 4000 residential houses will be built by the year 2025 and the numbers will increase every year.
It’s built over 377 square km of land and is planned to have six different styles of theme parks, water parks, an F1 racing track, athletic stadium, creative corner side, artistic activities and many more.
What is the purpose of Qiddiya?
The CEO of Qiddiya stated that this project is one of its kind, with huge investments.
It’s expected to give a boost to the countries economy, which currently depends on oil primarily.
It’s planned very carefully and tactfully. The purpose is not just to attract tourists but also provide a great alternative to the residents, so they don’t leave the country to spend. The Qiddiya construction was planned to direct all the tourism and keep them intact in the kingdom only.
So what can India learn?
Qiddiya can be an inspiration for India, and building something similar can not just boost the economy and create jobs but also boost the sports and entertainment sectors.
In a Tweet President Ram Nath Kovind said that Nouf Marwaai played an instrumental role for legalising Yoga in Saudi Arabia. She was born with an auto-immune disease and overcame the challenge through Yoga and Ayurveda. She was awarded Padma Shree in 2018.
She is the first Saudi certified yoga instructor. She is also an entrepreneur who has been travelling between Saudi Arabia and India and founded Arab Yoga Foundation.
In an interview published by Arab News, she says “I was underweight, tired, and suffered from malnutrition due to the extreme diets they put me on for my allergies and digestive problems. Symptoms that I had suffered from were joint pain, weakness, chronic fatigue, skin rash, allergies, loss of focus, sleeping problems and stiffness.”
She started taking organic vegetarian diet and stumbled upon a Yoga book. After which she travelled to India to study Yoga and Ayurvedic medicine.
This helped her heal and become stronger. She loves traveling to India.
In this thought provoking TED Talk, Joi Ito narrates how a bunch of people were able to innovate by working on a Problem instead of waiting for someone to solve it.
“Remember before the internet?” asks Joi Ito. “Remember when people used to try to predict the future?” In this engaging talk, the head of the MIT Media Lab skips the future predictions and instead shares a new approach to creating in the moment: building quickly and improving constantly, without waiting for permission or for proof that you have the right idea. This kind of bottom-up innovation is seen in the most fascinating, futuristic projects emerging today, and it starts, he says, with being open and alert to what’s going on around you right now. Don’t be a futurist, he suggests: be a now-ist.
If you are into Computers and haven’t heard of Linus Torvalds then you better do some lookup. To start with he gave us Linux and to add icing to the cake he created Git.
Recently I heard him talk in a TED interview and thought of sharing it. It’s a talk worth listening to. He is not a people’s person and likes to work in his quiet office, all by himself.
The part which sounded really interesting was his take on Visionaries and why he identified more with Edison than with Tesla.
I am not a visionary. I do not have a five-year plan, I don’t have a moon shot. I’m an engineer.
Listen him share his opinions.
How Barefoot College is impacting and transforming the life of women. Meet the Solar Engineers.
Why do we continue to limit the emotional lives of males when it serves no one?
A recent New York Times article takes a dig into the Male psychology and why it’s so hard for them to emote there feelings, unlike Females.
Being a “Male” I can relate to the findings. If you consider India for instance, then from a very young age boys are conditioned (by their families and societies) to become “Strong”.
Being strong means that you should avoid public display of your emotions. You are supposed to be the head of the household. If you cry you will be reminded that you are a Man, and a Man need not cry.
The emotions dry up gradually only to erupt in other forms. And anger becomes normal.
“Boys’ underperformance in school has more to do with society’s norms about masculinity than with anatomy, hormones or brain structure. In fact, boys involved in extracurricular cultural activities such as music, art, drama and foreign languages report higher levels of school engagement and get better grades than other boys. But these cultural activities are often denigrated as un-masculine by preadolescent and adolescent boys.”
“Bro Code” – The survival kit of many middle-class, white male students: online pornography, binge drinking, a brotherhood in which respect is proportional to the disrespect heaped onto young women during hookups, and finally, the most ubiquitous affirmation of their tenuous power, video games.
Surprisingly what studies have found is that from infancy through age 4 or 5, boys are more emotive than girls. But we socialize this vulnerability out of them.
The Article is worth reading and pondering on. We need to reevaluate things that have become normal and question if it’s of any benefit.
These are the lines spoken by Terri Trespicio at a TED talk where she recommends to stop searching for passion and start doing stuff. Can’t agree with her more.
Our society is plagued with this philosophy and this idea sells quite well. Not to say that its wrong but you loose out opportunities in this process.
Instead its way better to focus your energy on the job at hand.
It’s a very thoughtful and inspiring talk and I will highly recommend it.
Image Courtesy – TED Talk
“If you can explain the WHY of things then that makes a huge difference to People’s Motivation. They understand Purpose. Process of Learning and how it should be. Make it interesting.” – Elon Musk
As Elon Musk has rightly said answer to the above question can be very useful to build and keep your interest to Learn something.
Elon also mentions the use of Gamification to make learning fun.
Here is a video in which Elon Musk talks about this and more at the Khan Academy.
http://swf.tubechop.com/tubechop.swf?vurl=vDwzmJpI4io&start=2171.64&end=2388.81&cid=7818654
Image and Video Source – Youtube – Khan Academy
I wrote a whole Post on this topic sometime back. You might benefit from reading that.
The Google Lunar XPRIZE is a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth.
Deepana Gandhi from India is leading one such team – Team Indus
16 teams are competing for this Prize Money. Here is a a documentary web series about the people competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE
Why Android 