Big Data, Automation and Cows Who Decide When they want to be Milked

I came across this interesting read on Quartz.com. The post is about a farm in Iceland where the entire barn is automated. Here are some quotes from the article. When one of their cows wants to be milked, she walks to the center of the barn to one of the three self-milking Lely machines. She enters the machine—a gated, cow-size booth—and first has her teats inspected and cleaned. Next, the robot attaches its equipment to extract her milk while the cow chows down on some cow candy: tasty corn pellets supplemented with various vitamins and minerals. The whole process takes […]

The State of the Gig Economy

We have all at some point in time talked about or heard about the growth of the gig economy and how this could potentially be the future of work. While the number of people participating in the gig economy has been on a growth path, their ability to earn from their gigs alone to support them and their families has not been growing in proportion. JP Morgan Chase Institute recently did a study on the state of the online platform economy. It tried to answer a fundamental question – “Has all the technological and business model innovations that have led […]

How to Help a Colleague Who Seems Off Their Game

When we think about productivity at work, we need to think beyond ourselves. As they say, as a team we are as strong or as productive as the weakest link on our team. This translates to the fact that if someone on our team is not doing their best work, we have a role to play in helping them back to being their productive best. This might not be an official part of our job but working with peers who are productive and doing good work has an impact on our work as well. Most of the times, it could […]

Before Doing, There is Being

Last evening I was having trouble getting to sleep. So, I got up and went down to the swimming pool area and sat down on the chair next to the pool. I was not carrying my phone or a book or anything else with me. It was just me, nature and the sound of water flowing from the pool. There was something soothing about this soft noise of flowing water and moonlight. I think I sat there enjoying the moon light, a light breeze and the sound of flowing water for about half an hour. It felt like forever. I […]

How To Make Good Decisions

One thing that follows us all day around is the need to make decisions. Right from the time we wake up to the time that we go to sleep, we keep making decisions, one after the other. Some of these decisions are simple and don’t impact our lives much, while some of these decisions could have an everlasting impact on not only our lives but also those that live with and around us. We also have learnt from research that There are a lot of biases that are inherent in our thinking and can creep up in our decisions affecting […]