Regards.

Are you taking Noori seriously???

Imran.

Good luck !

Knowledge derived out of practical experiences could only stand the test of an argument. Its better to learn from experience than from books. With books, you’ll know more but it wouldn’t really have solid foundations, with experience you’ll learn less but it would have very solid foundations.

My experience has taught me that there are three kinds of people.

1) Who work really hard only - These will never be successful

2) Who work really hard and have very good interpersonal skills - These will be successful

3) Who don’t work hard but have very good interpersonal skills - These are the ones who will be highly successful

Of course i would define mark zuckerberg a fluke. There are 6 billion people on this planet. 4 billion are roughly dying from hunger, lack of clean water, etc. Then all of a sudden he is born in a country (USA) which has tremendous wealth. He is blessed with a family that is rich enough to send him to Harvard. His class mates are Cameron Winklevoss, and Tyler Winklevoss who write a program, and he steals that program and markets it as facebook (broadly defined, he is a crook like bill gates who stole apple’s software). When facebook becomes popular, there are a thousand networking sites but eventually only 2 or 3 networking sites become popular and he becomes a billionaire. The rest of the 900 or so networking sites entrepreneurs become losers and become part of the graveyard of failures. I think its all luck.

Firstly you talked about women deciding not to have kids. Again its a personal choice, no one is forcing them to do so. Even in subcontinent we have full fledged house wives, who decide to abandon their careers just to raise up their family.

Secondly you touched upon people preferring to use I-pods in metro rathar than getting engaged in a conversation with the person sitting next to them. It has all to do with human nature. Some people naturally want to get along with people (Extroverts) and some want to keep distance themselves from such conversations (Introverts) so i again think it will be unfair to blame it on the current work environments.

You referred about your father deciding to continue his profession as a teacher . Well you will agree with me that teachers now a days are the most busy people, even busier than doctors. They go to their institutes, then to coaching and tuition centers, then to home tutions and so on and so forth. Again its a choice that they make themselves and they still are happy with their lives.

Regarding Iacocca being lucky. Well luck would have favoured him one time, two times or may be 5 times but not for consecutive 20 years. We all make mistakes but its important how we learn from them and I think he did learned from his mistakes.

And as for Bill Gates, i think it is very special about Bill Gates because he was able to build upon on his success. Agreed, that during his time only a handful people had access to computers but again you have to give the guy credit for being smart enough to create value out of nothing. Would you also call success of facebook owner (Mark Zuckerberg) a fluke? He created this in 2004 when there were no shortage of not only PCs but people with extra ordinary computer skills. It has again to do with how people want to pursue their lives.

I would surely go through the books that you have recommended. Many thanks for your views though