One of the most compelling pieces of advice I ever heard is: What and who you are is a function of the choices you exercised in the past. What and who you will be is a function of the choices you exercise today.

Spend some time on the thought. Having done that, write a letter to your younger self. From whatever it is you have experienced until now, what advice would you give your younger self?

This is one of the exercises I ask people to do at the writing workshops I conduct. A thread that binds most notes is that everybody would rather be somebody or something else; they aren’t happy with who they are; and their letters often make for heart-breaking reading.

In asking this question of others, it was pertinent that I asked myself the same question. What can I do to live better? How can I be happier?

As geeks ask, are there Life Hacks?

Because I don’t know all of the answers, I thought it pertinent to engage in conversations with people and experiment with tools that lie at various intersections.

When I asked R. Sukumar (Suku, as he is popularly called), who edits this newspaper, if he’d allow me to document my experiments, he told me to go right ahead.

Hack#1: Find Purpose

Green light in hand, my first port of call was Amit Chandra, managing director at Bain Capital, a private equity firm. Widely known as a shy, gentle soul, I thought him and his wife Archana outliers. They devote 75% of their earnings to philanthropy.

Why, I wondered!

He asked me if I had read How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen. The question led to an engaging dialogue with him and a few others that I intend to share in another piece.

When Amit and Archana first read the book, Christensen’s questions resonated deeply.

Why is it that people who ought to be happy are unhappy?

Why do people behave unethically at work?

Why do their marriages get wrecked?

Why do their children end up delinquent?

Christensen points out that this is because most people implement the wrong “strategies”. Why? Drawing from examples of peers, students and companies he consults with, Christensen argues that this is because all of them don’t have a purpose. Not having a purpose means they don’t have the right strategy. To have the right strategy, you ought to have the right metrics in place to measure your life. In the book, Christensen talks of finding purpose and implementing the right strategies.

When Amit and Archana Chandra asked themselves questions on the back of Christensen’s framework, they went through a gut-wrenching transformation.

As a journalist, it compelled me to ask this question of a few others who are seemingly at peace with themselves. I intend to share in detail their experiences on how they found purpose in the weeks to come.

To make a start, Christensen’s talk on the theme can be viewed onmintne.ws/1jX6Fag. It is one of those rare talks that hold the potential to change how you live.

Hack #2: Find Yourself

In my earlier assignment, as part of a leadership development workshop, I found myself participating in the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Test. The way it works is simple. You’re asked some questions. There are no right or wrong answers. Based on your responses, the MBTI framework classifies you into one of 16 types.

The test done, all of us there were asked to participate in a game of cricket. Jayshree and Mangesh Kirtane of consulting firm Alchemy Management, who had administered the tests, were watching the game closely and making notes.

At the end of the game, they brought their observations to the table. The test indicated that I fit into a quadrant on the matrix called INTJ (an acronym for introversion, intuition, thinking, judgment).

Their interpretation caught me by surprise. My behaviour on the field was remarkably close to what the test predicted. I am naturally introverted, a bad loser, need closure and take on more than I ought to. But I always thought of myself as extroverted, capable of demonstrating grace when faced with adversity and fine with open-ended situations.

The outcome was at variance with what I thought of myself.

Detractors argue that the test is as flaky as rubbish peddled in Linda Goodman’sSun Signs.

To understand if that was indeed the case, I consulted Kuldeep Datay, a clinical psychologist, and Siddika Panjwani, a neuropsychologist, both of whom I had met under particularly adverse circumstances.

They told me that in their experience as counsellors, MBTI is a good tool to understand people. Without having administered it to me, Datay told me he was willing to punt that I was Type INTJ. You can take it free on various sites (likemintne.ws/1lOGlL3).

Exercise caution. There are variables at play within the matrix. Somebody who lies in the same quadrant as you do may not exhibit similar traits.

To understand why, you ought to subject yourself to a more rigorous test. There are two options here. A more detailed version of MBTI called MBTI II and the Golden Personality Test Profiler (www.talentlens.com).

I opted for the latter because it is cheaper at 1,500 as against 4,500 for the MBTI II. More importantly, Datay assured me that the results are similar. But Pearson, n, one of the world’s largest learning companies, which administers this test, has kept it cheaper for the moment because it wants to take the established MBTI II head on.

It took me roughly 45 minutes to complete the test.

While it confirmed everything MBTI told me, when I sat down with Datay, he told me I was a man going through significant changes in my head. It helped put into perspective why the nature of my relationships were changing; why how I work was transforming; and most importantly, it provided me a 30,000 feet view of who I was as a person, the various conflicts playing in my head, and options I could possibly exercise as an individual.

Time spent on this exercise is time well-spent. Understanding what makes you tick helps deal with idiots.

While on idiots, introspect. Most idiots don’t. That is why they have no clue what they stand for. A good place to start is www.yourmorals.org. Run by a group of social psychologists from three American universities, their objective is to understand how our “moral minds” work.

For instance, why do different kinds of people argue passionately about what is “right”?

In answering their questions, you get insights into what you stand for. For instance, I always thought myself a liberal who accords “authority” the respect it deserves. But my score shows I have practically zero tolerance. Perhaps, that explains my churlish behaviour at times. Or maybe, why I’m happy in journalism, a domain where I’m pushed into questioning authority.

I’d imagined myself as the kind of person who disdained puritanism in any form, a “liberal trait”. The premium I place on “purity” as a virtue, however, is as high as that of somebody with a conservative dogma.

I thought I was the kind to whom hedonism comes easily. But on the “distributive justice” scale, when asked to choose, I tilted to minimalism—a theme I intend to write on another day.

I know I’m guilty of falling prey to stereotypes. That is why I try very consciously to be non-judgmental. What stunned me when I took the test is that it showed I am twice as likely as anybody to stereotype people. In hindsight, I can think of at least a few dozen instances where my calls on people and situations were wrong.

Creators of these tests include people like Jonathan Haidt, whose book The Happiness Hypothesis ought to be on every bookshelf. It’s good to know where you stand.

Hack #3: Get Things Done

Buy a copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done—perhaps the best self-help book ever written.

It talks of how to unclutter your mind and improve productivity. Allow me to share a glimpse of how it works. Take time off and list everything on your mind. Then plot a quadrant of the kind displayed here and place all that you’ve listed into the box you think it fits best (see graphic).

Now head to www.zendone.com and follow instructions. Zendone is perhaps not the best tool. There are others that do the job superbly well. But it is a good place to tinker around for two weeks to implement all that you’re reading.

The central idea here is that once you’ve put all of what you have to get done into this matrix, you can prioritize clinically.

In doing that, productivity multiplies exponentially and leaves you with time on hand to engage in higher order tasks.

Hack #4: Quantify Everything

At times, it is good to be anal and take a stab at the Quantified Self Movement (www.quantifiedself.com). Believers argue that what cannot be measured cannot be managed.

Every once in a while, I get obsessed with measuring everything I am doing. How many hours do I sleep? What is the quality of that sleep? What time of the hour do I perform best? How do I capture every significant moment of my life? Do I know where every rupee I spend goes? This way I know exactly what am I doing, when, where, why, how.

When viewed on a dashboard, this data provides me with inputs to take tangible steps and improve. Visit www.quantifiedself.com/guide for a listing of every piece of contemporary software and hardware you may need to be part of this movement.

Two tools I use often are Daytum (www.daytum.com) and Mood Panda (www.moodpanda.com).

I use Daytum to track what I described above. Mood Panda may sound floozy, but it allows me keep a record of my “happiness”. If I see a dip in the quotient, I know there is a problem on hand and that I need to work at getting the graph back to optimal levels.

I think it only fair that you ask why energy should be expended on all of these tools.

My only submission here is from P.N. Forni’s lovely book, The Thinking Life: How to Thrive in the Age of Distraction: “The more you value life, the more you engage with it. The more you engage with it, the more you think your way through it. The more you think your way through it, the more effective you are as its trustee. It is then that you finally live out the elemental truth that in life there are no rehearsals and you only play for keeps.”

(This piece was first published by Mint. All copyrights to this article rest with the newspaper)