Archives for May 2022

Whenever there’s a higher position or a reward associated, it seems obvious to choose the top performer. However, you need to watch out for spotlight rangers. I am pretty sure that if you’ve ever worked in a team or have led a team, you’ve had at least one person who’s a “spotlight ranger.”

The concept of a spotlight ranger comes from the US Army Ranger Schools. A “spotlight ranger” is slang for the rangers who don’t give a mission their best unless a high-ranking officer is looking over them. In other words, she or he performs only for the “spotlight.” And the concept of a spotlight ranger is not just limited to the army and the military, it is applicable to everything.

We often have teammates and colleagues that are great people when there’s a superior person present watching over their activities, and these spotlight rangers do great things when the spotlight is over them and they are being watched. But as soon as the superior officer (the spotlight), is gone, they are literal jerks.

If you want to create a great team, or if you want to hire great employees, you need to understand this concept. Because if someone is a spotlight ranger, they are not really team players. They do it only to be appreciated by the superior or to get the reward, while not really being a good person. I’ve had multiple encounters with spotlight rangers, and it’s fairly easy to spot a spotlight ranger when you are working with them as their colleague, but it’s really hard to spot one if you’re leading the team or if you’re a senior officer. But there is a solution to all of this: 360 Feedback.

After the US Army Ranger Schools detected this problem of spotlight rangers, they developed a three-layer selection system. With this system in place, to be promoted from a ranger to an army officer, the rangers would have to pass:

1. All the exams conducted
2. All the physical tests
3. A 360 feedback test

The first two basics, which is to say that they need to be good at being a ranger. The third test, however, didn’t check their ability to be a ranger, but to find out the team players. In the 360 feedback test, all rangers give feedback on every other ranger. This helps to find out whether someone is a team player or a spotlight ranger.

This same concept can be used while creating a team, rewarding winners, or hiring people. While how you implement this is entirely up to you, the consequences of not doing so can be disastrous and draining for a team.

And if you’re a team member, don’t be a spotlight ranger. If you aren’t really passionate about the job you do or the mission of the company/team, don’t do it. Do what you love!

If you’ve come this far in this article, thank you for reading. I really appreciate you doing so. If you may, please let me know that you read this article with a comment or like, or you can DM me. You might as well make my day.

Take care!

This probably is not a very interesting article, this is mostly a personal update on what I’ve been up to recently. So read this only if you have a few minutes to spare.

A lot of things have been going on recently. One of those things, definitely, is the fact that my board exam is approaching and I am not entirely sure how I am going to do in it. There are several lessons in Mathematics that I haven’t entirely understood. There are also 18 sets of questions that we have to submit in order to get our admit cards to take our board exams, and there is no way around it. There are also several assignments that I have to catch up with.

Despite all the pressure for the exam, the thing that has me engaged the most is not anything related to it, it’s something else. If you have read my previous articles, you probably already know that I have been in multiple things for most of my life.

When I was in grades 5, 6, and 7, I used to write. I have written over a dozen poems, poems about everything. I was so much into writing that I had written a short novel in grade 7, the summary of which was published in a national newspaper. I wrote a few poems in grade 8 as well, but then I stopped writing.

Then came grade 9, the year of photography. I had been the “Photographer Guy” ever since I was a kid for all the weddings and major family events, but I had never thought of pursuing it as a career. But then in grade 9, I don’t know how exactly but I got into photography. I think it started when during a club event I was handed a camera because there was no one else to photograph. I did like taking photos even before this, but I think that was the trigger point.

That was the trigger point for getting me to be serious about photography. I used to watch YouTube videos about photography the entire day and night. Even when I used to be in my washroom, I’d be watching videos about photography for how to set the perfect frame while taking a photo; about the rule of thirds, leading lines, golden hour, exposure, shutter speed, aperture, composition, colors, and so many things. I used to watch videos even when I’d be doing my assignments and having food, and even while I’d go to bed to sleep. I’d sleep watching videos about photography and in the morning I’d wake up with a dead phone. And then I got a long multiplug adapter to get my phone charger near my bed so that I could watch YouTube the whole night and my phone wouldn’t die.

My brother would get really annoyed when he would call me to talk to me but I’d tell him about how cool getting this camera or getting that camera would be. I almost had him buy a camera we couldn’t afford. At a point, I was even researching film schools I could go to. I still receive emails from Everest Film Academy, New York Film Academy and some other film schools that I had filled forms to receive regular updates.

Then came along grade 10, the corona and code year. I remained in Birgunj, the city where I studied till grade 10, for most of the COVID lockdown period. I couldn’t go out, so I started using my computer very much. It started with binge-watching movies and web series, but then I got bored of watching because there was nothing interesting left that I knew of. So I joined LinkedIn.

When I joined LinkedIn, after a few weeks, I saw a post that was shared by one of my connections. It was about volunteering at an INGO. I thought I should give it a try since I had nothing else to do. So I shoot a DM to a co-founder of the INGO telling her that I wanted to volunteer. I told her that I wasn’t yet sure how exactly I could contribute but that I want to do something.

I wasn’t expecting it, but the very next morning I receive a response from her asking when I was free to set up a meeting with her team. I said, “Today evening?” Then we set up a meeting, I try all the different angles in my room for the meeting so that I’d look good, and I change into the only formal cloth that I had, and then finally we have the meeting. I was super excited and motivated and scared and nervous all at the same time, but it went alright. After a week I join their team as an English teacher for a student in Honduras. I taught her for about 2 weeks and then I realized that I didn’t really want to teach, maybe because I was having to learn Spanish which I was really struggling with.

I then decided that I’d work on building their website. I didn’t know anything besides basic HTML till then. After I knew that I wanted to work on building their website, I started watching YouTube videos. I started watching hours-long tutorials on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, WordPress, and GoDaddy. I started using VS Code (a code editor software) to build web pages for the INGO. This time as well, I would watch YouTube videos for hours and hours, similar to how I used to watch about photography.

And then I got into freelancing. If you don’t know, a freelancer is someone who is self-employed and works with clients on a project or task basis and doesn’t have a fixed employer. By then I knew how to build a simple but good enough website using both HTML, CSS, JS, and GoDaddy. So I monetized that skill. I made about $17 (about 2,000 NPR) doing that. It’s less, but it was the first money I made.

And then, I gave up on freelancing. Freelancing, at least when I started as a newbie to the industry, was very demanding. I would have to reach out to potential clients and keep applying for projects on UpWork and Freelancer and rarely get any clients. And even when I used to get any clients, they had no idea what exactly they wanted for me to build and I’d have to make countless nights. I was irritated and tired. So I stopped freelancing.

Then my brother recommended me CS50, a free computer science course offered by Harvard University. So I did some research and dived right in. Professor David Malan who teaches the course was amazing. I started watching all the lectures and doing all the problem set assignments and submitting them. I used to study till late at night and the whole day and not cook healthy because it was time-consuming. But my PC couldn’t keep up. It had only 2 GB of RAM and the lag in everything I did was really bad. So I couldn’t finish CS50.

And then I started learning how to build websites on my phone. And then I had to choose between getting a laptop and a camera, I choose getting a laptop because I really needed one for my online classes and to code, photography wasn’t really a priority at the time. And fast forward, I built a few websites, one of them you’re on right now.

Basically, a lot of things happened and everything that I ever got interested in, I got addicted to. I’d learn about every new interest all day long. Fast forward to grade 11, I started getting interested in, learning about and doing other things as well, but I was in control.

But now that my exams are close, I am getting back to being how I used to be. I am getting back into photography and filmmaking. Maybe the trigger this time was a video I shot with the team that I am a part of in school. We shot with the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV which is like a revolutionary camera in the photography industry.

This happens to me every single time. When I get interested in something, I get so much into it that I often skip taking care of important things to learn about it. The upside of that, however, is that I learn soooooo many things, so many things that I wouldn’t have learned or known about if it weren’t for this addiction or this obsession of mine.

But now that my exams are close, I’m trying to focus. I must. I will.

The entire point of this article was to just write, to write about everything I have been thinking about these couple of days. I just wanted to in a way journal and braindump at the same time. This article got a little too long, but alright.

Anyways, if you read this super long article, thank you! Know that I truly appreciate you for doing this. If you may, let me know that you read it so far. It’d mean a lot.

I hope you have a great day/evening/night.

See ya!

Once upon a time, … Oh! Wait! Just so you know, this is an article about compounding, or even better: this is A STORY about compounding. And this article, this story has many lessons with it. Even if you’re not interested in finance or investing or money at all, this story can change your perspective which can change your life.

Let’s do it again.

Once upon a time, there was a king.
He had a happy kingdom, and he loved his queen.
But more than his queen, he liked playing chess.
He was so into it, he wanted to see the inventor’s face.

So he sent out a word to meet the person who had invented chess. The king said that he’d reward the inventor of chess with anything they desired. The word was spread throughout the kingdom and even beyond the kingdom. After about two days, the inventor came to meet the king. The king assured the inventor that he’d give the inventor any reward that he wanted.

The inventor said, “Some grain of rice is all I want, my lord.” “But I want the grain of rice in such a way that a single grain of rice be placed on the first square of the chessboard. Then two grains on the second square, four grains on the third, and so on. Doubling each time.”

The king, gladdened by such a small price for such a wonderful game, immediately agreed. The king ordered his treasurer to pay the agreed sum of rice. People throughout the kingdom made fun of the inventor saying how stupid he was for asking for so less a reward.

A week later, the inventor went before the king and asked why he had not received his reward. The king, outraged that his treasurer had disobeyed him, immediately summoned him and demanded to know why the inventor had not been paid.

The treasurer explained that giving the inventor the promised amount of rice grains was not possible. When the king asked why, the treasurer explained simple math.

If they followed the agreed condition, on the first box of the chessboard, there would be 1 rice grain. On the second box, there would be 2 rice grains, on the third, there would be 4 grains, 8 on the fourth, and so on.

That is:
1*2*2*2*….. till 64 (there are 64 boxes on a chessboard)
= 1*2^(64)
= 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 grains of rice
= 1,195,328,904,249,040 kg of rice
= 1,195,328,904,249 metric ton
= 1.19 trillion metric ton

For reference, India produces only 122 million metric tons of rice each year.

That was the reason why the inventor was not paid yet. What happened then, whether or not the inventor was ever paid, or whether or not the king was able to keep his promise are things we are not going to talk about. I know you must curious right now, but let’s get back to the point.

The entire point of this story is to teach you the power of compounding. Even if you start investing right now and even if it’s a small sum of money, in the long run, it’s going to give you a huge Return on Investment (R.O.I.).

Being financially literate and conscious is very essential if you ever want to achieve financial freedom. Even if you make over $100,000 (NPR 1,22,25,000) a year and if you are not using it the right way, if you are just spending it on not so important things, or just not using that money properly, you will be working for the rest of your life.

Be aware. Be clever. Be educated. Be financially free.

If you read the article till the end, thank you. I think, regardless of your age, you should educate yourself about money. Because although people say “Money isn’t everything” or “Money can’t buy you happiness”, money is something important and money can buy you the means to be happy (controversial).

---

PS: If you want to learn more about money, I strongly recommend two books:
1. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
2. Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin

And if you want to learn about making money, you must read The Millionaire Fastlane by M. J. DeMarco.