People play games. Everyone does. I don’t think there is any person who doesn’t play games. Because it’s all relative. You may not play games as much as the next person on one thing, but you probably do in another. I think over time we realize that it’s necessary to play games to protect our selves. Because if you are completely open about what you really think or want, chances are that someone is going to walk all over you. It’s just become the way things are.

Business is a game. Sales is a game. Relationships are a game. You posture one way or the other in order to try and get the desired result. My cousin was stressing most of the day because she wanted this guy to call her. But of course she couldn’t call him. And likewise… if you make the first move, you’re implicitly losing the power struggle. Right?

That is how things are. I accept that. But doesn’t mean I have to like it. I would so much prefer to be able to be in a position to say this is what I think, this is what I want without having to worry about what people think, what it does to my competitive position, what it does for my emotional exposure – so there really is no such thing as Free Speech. Yes, you are physically free to say what you want, but you are intellectually, emotionally and rationally bound by your own mind to never be able to practice Free Speech.

On Jay Leno / Conan (one of those late night shows) every once in a while, there is a segment which says “What they’re really thinking?” or something similar. That would be both wonderfully amazing and scary at the same time, if you had the ability to really know what people are thinking behind their actions and their words… the whole truth and nothing but the truth… for once.

When I was in highschool some of the subjects I hated were History and Social Sciences (Civics). One of the things that we were made to learn as part of the curriculum was that after independence in 1947, one of the things India adopted was a series of five year plans in order to help outline the development of the country. We had to learn the key milestones for each five-year plan.

Well, recently – and I forget who reminded me of this – it was probably Varun – that I seem to be operating in five-year plan mode. I spent five years at Carnegie Mellon. I’ve now spent five years running companies. And I think what that tells me is that it’s time for a change. And time for me to start thinking about the next five year plan. Now, it would be too presumptuous of me to actually map out anything beyond five years… because that would be assuming things and assumption is the mother of all fuckups. I’m definitely a subscriber of (or at least trying to be) the micro-economics saying that my professor in undergrad would keep repeating in order to drive the point home – “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

So all my planning and all the markers I decide to set must fit into the time frame of a five year plan. I think I’ve figured out what I want to do for the next stretch, but unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to go into that just yet. In another couple of months I’ll be able to talk about it some more.

The bar has been raised. The marker has been set.