In conversation: Ravi Venkatesan on his new book 'What The Heck Do I Do With My Life'

Ravi Venkatesan is a business leader, author, and social entrepreneur. He is the chairman of the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) and founder of the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME). He is also UNICEF’s Special Representative for Young People and Innovation and serves on the Boards of the Rockefeller Foundation and Hitachi Ltd. Ravi Venkatesan has previously also served as The Chairman of Microsoft India, Bank of Baroda and Cummins India, and Co-Chairman of Infosys Limited. He has a B Tech from IIT Bombay, an MS from Purdue University and an MBA from Harvard Business School and is the author of two bestselling books, What The Heck Do I Do With My Life: How To Flourish in Our Turbulent Times and Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere. Ravi Venkatesan has been voted as one of India’s best management thinkers by Thinkers50 and Microsoft’s Alumni Hero 2020. Ashutosh Kumar Thakur, a Bangalore-based management professional and literary critic, speaks with Ravi Venkatesan about his latest book What The Heck Do I Do With My Life? How To Flourish In Our Turbulent Times, published by Rupa. Your book’s title is quite fascinating. Could you start by sharing the inspiration behind the title and what it signifies in the wider context of your book? The title of my book is What The Heck Do I Do With My Life and the reason I chose this title was because I think we’re living in an extraordinary time. If you see what is happening over the last 10-20 years, we are seeing an extraordinary amount of change and an acceleration of everything, and some people hope that this is just temporary and the world will go back to a more predictable, stable sort of period. But that does not appear to be the case. If anything, we’re going to see even more change, even more turbulence, even more acceleration. And you know I write in my book that the world is going to change more in this century in these 100 years than in all human history, the last 10 thousand years and there are reasons for this which I talk about in the book. There are many forces which are causing this and the forces include technology and innovation. The forces include climate change and what we are doing to the environment. The forces include extreme polarization of views. You see that in our own country, but you see this in every country and globally and all these factors are working together to create extreme change. And the problem is human beings, and the human mind is not designed to handle so much change and our brains are designed to process linear change. What we’re seeing today is exponential change. Right, you see what has happened just in the last few years we had COVID, the first pandemic in 100 years.

You see wars happening in many parts of the world simultaneously. You see this breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and what that is and what that is going to mean for every person. It’s going to profoundly change our lives, the way we work etc and most human beings. We struggle to adapt to so much change and when you struggle to adapt, the consequences can be very catastrophic, which is why the cover of my book has a small dinosaur in it. And the reason I put the dinosaur is if you remember 65 million years ago when things changed very suddenly. Animals were unable to adapt and most of them 95 percent of them became extinct, including the dinosaurs. And so, the risk today is with so much change. Many of us will struggle, we will get hurt and I didn’t want that to happen. Therefore I find more and more people saying. Look, how do I make sense of what’s going on? What do I do with my life? There is no predictability, or stability anywhere, so how do I navigate these times? And so that’s why I picked the book. This was the title here. The title was only a working title I was supposed to, but then I found everybody liked it, so we stayed with it superior. With your book, you address the challenge of finding one’s purpose in the extraordinary time we live in today’s turbulent world. What led you to explore such an existential matter so deeply and with objectivity? Yeah, so that’s another good question. When things are changing so fast all around you then all of us need some anchors. That’ll hold us. So, if you think about a river which is flowing extremely fast. Then for you to not be swept away by the water you need to hold on to something. So, the question is what do we hold on to when things are changing so fast all around us? And I said there are two or three things. One is your closest friends and family, they are anchors, and they will hold you. You saw that during COVID when there was no support, there were no hospital beds, no oxygen, no medicine, nothing. We all came to each other’s rescue Okay. So, your closest friends and family are one anchor. Another one is your own beliefs, including your own religious or spiritual belief which keeps you strong. And the third one is a sense of purpose. If you have a clear view of ‘why I am here’, what am I supposed to do with this life? Then even though there is a lot of fluidity around you, you can stay focused, stay concentrated and be steady. This is why I say knowing or finding some purpose for your life is so important. It was always important, but it is incredibly important when things are changing so much. You have had a highly diverse career including leadership roles in both the corporate and social sectors. How has your own experience influenced the rich insights and ideas you share in your book? See it was very difficult to write this book because how do you answer this question? What do I do with my life when each person’s life is so unique? Okay your life, your circumstances, who you are so different from me? How do I do this? Number two, nobody wants ‘Gyan’ okay. So, nobody wants a book which is preachy and tells you so I said. Look, the only thing I can do is reflect on my own experiences, how I have learned and grown, what mistakes have made, what has challenged me, what has enabled me to be somewhat successful and let me be authentic in putting down those things. And I felt if I simply am open about these things from my own life and experience, some of it may resonate with the reader. And then they can take away what they want. So, like the blind man and the elephant each one will feel some different part of somebody, each person will take away something from this that will be useful. So that’s how I brought my whole life and experience. And into the book. Absolutely! My next question about the book is related to the importance of adaptivity and resilience. Could you explain why these qualities are essential for individuals navigating the uncertainties of the modern world? Yeah, look as I said, you know during this period of the century there’s going to be so much change so many shocks which we can’t even predict or imagine who would have predicted COVID. You can be living in a nice city like Bangalore and suddenly something can happen. For instance, we’ve seen floods in Chennai, and we’ve seen floods in Bangalore. We’re going to see more and more extreme weather events as the planet heats up. Suddenly, a peaceful place could be engulfed by war, so the poor people of Ukraine were going along fine. Nobody would have imagined that they would be at war with Russia and all their cities, their lives, everybody, everything would be destroyed, and this can happen in any place. For instance, after Trump lost the election on 6 January, 2021. I think there was a mob that attacked the US Capitol who would have believed such a thing as possible. So, we’re going to see more and more shocks, more and more challenges. You can be in a good job working for a good company like Google. Suddenly you could lose your job because there’s a reorganization. They eliminated your job. Whatever AI is going to have untold consequences, so the point is that you can’t predict these things. What you need to develop is the ability to deal with such shocks, and deal with such change. This is the quality of resilience and then to adapt to the new circumstances and find a way to be successful. So, if you saw again during COVID-19, some people came out of COVID-19 strong. Other people had huge distress and mental health problems of economic hardship, Okay. So, they were unable to adapt to this shock. So, this is why these two qualities are so crucial. And in the book, I talk a lot about how you develop that. In your book, you mentioned the concept of ‘intentional living’. What does this term mean, and how can readers apply it to their lives? Intentional Living, which means that don’t just go through, don’t just sleep, walk through life, but think hard about the choices you make. For instance, I say to be intentional about who you spend time with. People don’t realise that who you hang out with your friends, colleagues, family, whatever profoundly influences how you think and how you act. So, it shouldn’t be an accident that you hang out with these people, it should be a choice. This is in our religion. In Hinduism, there’s this idea called ‘Satsang’. Satsang means you hang out with good people because that will influence you also. Become that sort of a person, so be intentional about that. Today you can’t trust even people in positions of power and authority. So, you look at many of the leaders around the world, so-called leaders, and they tell complete lies. So, if you don’t apply your mind to say, look, is this person who’s telling the truth? Okay, and therefore, should I believe and trust him or her, you can end up in a very wrong place. So, for instance, a good example of this which is non-controversial is former President Trump in the US. He blatantly tells lies Oka, which are proven to be lies again and again and again, but one-third of the US are diehard supporters and followers of Trump. No matter what he says or does they follow. He’s going to take them down the wrong path. So, like that. I say, be careful about who you trust and who you believe. Where do you live? Where you live has a profound impact on what happens to your life. So, you decided to come live in Bangalore. So have I, and that has certain consequences. If you go live somewhere else, that’ll play out differently. So, you have to be intentional about these things and not just drift around by accident. One of the key themes in your book is the idea of ‘finding your North Star’. Could you elaborate on this concept and provide some variance on how readers can discover their North path? It can be very helpful for young minds especially. Yeah, this goes back to an earlier question. You ask about purpose. What does North Star not star mean? It is something that stays fixed in the sky. Okay, and you can use it to navigate then. This is how sailors 1,000 years ago used to sail their ships. They used to look at the North Star and they knew that was North. So, like that. What is the fixed direction in your life, that is your purpose? It’s very important to live your life with purpose. And again, for that, I’d say ‘go read the book’ or see some of my videos. But the challenge is. How do you find your purpose? Okay. It’s not obvious tea care, so somebody is born. They know there’s going to be a writer right from an early age. They’re clear they have to be a writer. Somebody else is very clear right from the early days. They’re going to be a doctor or a musician. Okay. Bill Gates knew when he was five that he had to write software, but these are exceptions. This is true for maybe five per cent of the population, but the rest of us the 95 per cent. Finding your Northam or purpose or direction is a process of trial and error, trial and error. You try something and then you say no, but I learned something, but it’s not this. You try something else, and you must experiment your way to finding your purpose. So, in my life, for instance. I spent the first 45 years working for two companies. The second was Microsoft. After that, I began to do many, many, many different things which I write about in my book. They’re like Gandhi’s experiments with truth. I intentionally tried this, tried that many things worked, and many things didn’t work. But out of that, it became clear that I am here largely to try and make the world a little bit more beautiful through the unique gifts that I have been given. Okay. So, for each of us, God has given us unique gifts. Okay whatever that is, that is your talent, your experiences, your network whatever and we must figure out how to put this to use to make the world better. So, in any case, you cannot sit at a desk and speak. Oh, what is my North Starr? What is my purpose? You must experiment your way. Your book discusses the importance of lifelong learning. What are some practical steps that individuals can take to continue learning and growing throughout their lives? Yeah, the big challenge I see is people who finish school or finish college, they say ‘Bus ho Gaya’ (It’s Over) okay. That means I’ve arrived, and they think this is the end of learning. Okay, the problem today is things are changing so fast. What you know today is obsolete in five years in a little more time, it’ll be obsolete in three years, so you have to constantly reinvent yourself, learn new things, and acquire new skills and if you don’t do that, you’re going to get left behind very badly. So that’s why I say learning is lifelong and particularly because, as we all know, people are generally now living much longer, you know, human. The life expectancy in India used to be 70 years now. It’s probably north of eight years, at least for middle-class Indians. Okay, we all know people who are living to 95. So, if you’re going to live to 95, then you have to be engaged and productive till you’re at least 80. So, you have to continue to learn new things. And so, the trick is to remain curious and have an open mind. Okay! And so okay now that last year there was a lot of fuss with AI. About a year ago, chat GPT first showed up. It doesn’t matter how old you are. You could be 16 or you could be 75. When something new comes, it’s good to go and show some curiosity and say what is this chat? Chat GPT, let me try it, let me use it. Let me see how I can. You take advantage of this. Something is happening in Gaza. Okay, you can’t say this doesn’t concern me. You should have curiosity. Why is there this conflict in Gaza? Know you should show interest in what is happening. Okay. So, you have to cultivate this quality. The beautiful thing is we all have this quality of curiosity. And in learning when you’re a child, you see every baby. Every young person is intensely curious about the world. You want to taste everything, you want to touch everything, you want to break everything. And that curiosity dies over time. For a lot of us, all you have to do is go back to being a child. I like your city, there’s a proper term for something exactly. That’s exactly what we have to discover. In your opinion, what’s the role of mentors’ and role models in helping individuals discover their purpose and flourish in interment times?  So, this idea of a mentor is extremely important. You know, when I look at my own life of 60 years now, I can say right from childhood there was somebody who’s like an angel ‘Farishta’! You know, who comes into your life and shows you the way? Particularly when you’re in a difficult situation, they’re able to give you confidence, they’re able to show you your way, they’re able to open a door that was closed for me. It was some of my teachers growing up. Then over time some of them were among your senior people in the company where I worked. Sometimes it was just some great leader like Narayana Murthy or someone like that. And they were profoundly important and influential in how I began to think about things. Or you know, having opportunities open to me and you’re very grateful for that. So, I think it’s very important to seek out such mentors. Recently I posted a video on LinkedIn which talked about how to find mentors. And then they’re all around and it’s important, very crucial. What advice would you give to someone who is struggling to find their person or purpose in life?  Yeah, the first thing I would say to this person is look ‘your situation is not unusual. It’s normal. Okay, we all go through points in our lives where we struggle to find inspiration. You struggle to find passion. Okay, I’ve been through this multiple times in my life so don’t feel bad. That’s the nature of the journey of our life. When you reach that point, what is important to do is again do a lot of micro experiments, which is you try many things, supposing you enter a room where there are ten doors, all of which are locked or closed. Yeah, okay, and you don’t know which is the way out. What do you do? You try each door and suddenly one of them opens and you go there like that when you’re in this position when you don’t like anything. Nothing seems to be working. You have to not give up hope, but at that moment try pushing on different doors and see which one opens because one of them will open. Can you share your upcoming projects or initiatives related to the themes explored in your book? I’m glad you asked that question. I’ve recently started work on my next book. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get out in 2024 and it’s about AI. How can you succeed in AI? First World, okay? Will AI take my job? What can I do to prepare to reduce the risk of AI being made obsolete by AI? So that’s my next project. Excellent project indeed. Something well-timed and relevant. Finally, what do you hope the readers’ will take away from the What The Heck Do I Do With My Life after reading it. I sincerely hope that every reader finds at least two or three things that they can apply to their life. Many tens of thousands have bought the book and read it, and many more, probably a million people have seen my videos, including the famous one on happiness. And the feedback is Wow. I’m so glad that you also went through this. Now, we all think our lives, our challenges, our struggles, and our failures are unique. Okay, it’s not. So, I think I just hope readers feel reassured. I hope readers will find clarity in their own lives and find two or three practical useful things that they can apply. The interviewer is a Bengaluru-based management professional and literary critic. He can be reached at ashutoshbthakur@gmail.com. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.