Never too late

It's already Jan 15th, half way into the first month of a new year, and I have still not told myself the story of the last year. Yes, for some unknown reason, I have gotten into this habit of blogging about the past year on new years eve. This time it was different. I did not blog about the last year. Or, let's say I couldn't. Not that the thought did not pass by mind; but I was caught up in some other thoughts, about the future, stemmed from some things in the last year. There were things that I had to change, and I was trying to figure out how.


Thinking about the last year, 2011, has nothing particularly interesting per se, but it gave me experiences which were exciting and not so. All I remember now are just a few glimpses. Time really flies by, doesn't it?


As every new year, 2011 did bring with it new avenues for growth and development. On a professional front, I worked on something which went into a product which people would use, which would make their lives better. No, this is not something from a Philips ad saying to make lives better. I've always wanted to work on things which would impact people's lives directly, and I could live up to my beliefs this time. It was an extremely interesting period; I learned a lot about work and the professional world. The smile and pride I saw in my father's eyes the day I showed my work is something that I would never forget. And I met some really nice people I would be friends with for a really long time. I had my first international trip, and am really thankful to my team lead for giving me this opportunity.


On a personal front, some things did not work out as expected, and I felt really bad for that. Hope things get better.


So, what am I expecting this year? Call it gut feel or hunch, I believe this year's going to bring some change in my life. Or, may be I should work for that. Oh yeah, my new year resolution: "accept life as it comes, just be ready".

Why we should read a lot

Thinking about reading books?

When I asked this question to myself, I paused for a moment and thought about reading itself and realized that there is lot more to reading than just books. This post is an attempt to understand this 'reading' a bit further and thus learn how we can benefit from it in our daily lives. Shall we?

The first thing that comes to our mind when we think about reading is books followed by news papers, magazines and so on. But what we forget often is that we read a lot more than just books or news papers. We read incidents, experiences, people and their behavior, environment and a lot more. It is interesting to note that we actually derive a lot of knowledge through these instruments of information. Of course reading here means not just reading some text, but understanding and interpreting them. I hope you get what I am trying to say here.

So now that we have a broader understanding of reading itself, let us see why we should read a lot more than we normally do. Don't worry, I will not ask you to become a full time researcher :-)

One of the main benefits of reading a lot is a better comprehension. To understand this, it is necessary to understand how we understand things in our daily life. Usually we learn a lot of new things by relating them to the things which we already understand. This means that every new learning about a subject actually corresponds to an understanding of it in relation to something which we already understand plus a little extra which we do not know yet. This can be called as incremental learning. It actually helps us a lot to make sense of a lot of new things which we encounter in our daily lives. We might not realize this, but this is what we do most of the times. Don't believe me? Try looking into how you understand some thing new this time. This is not to say that we learn 'all' of the things in a similar way. We do learn some 'ground truths' which form the base for all our further learning. One good example in our daily life is how we learn to use new gadgets. Once we use a phone or a software, we get a broad understanding of its behavior and the next time we have to use a new phone or software, we realize that we already know a little bit to get started. Make sense?

So how does reading more help us in this regard? Well, by reading more on varied subjects we increase our overall perception of things and our mind tries to form relationships which might not be very obvious. This helps in reducing the amount of that 'extra' information that I mentioned in the earlier paragraph we need to know to understand some thing. This in turn means that we can now make sense of things in a more easy way. The example I mentioned in the earlier paragraph can be used here also to understand better. So what I am trying to say here is that we need to consciously read things beyond just casual encounters with them to understand the new ones better.

I will end this post by talking about one more area of benefit - problem solving. In our daily life we do a lot of problem solving without even realizing it. A lot of the times, we hear people suggesting how to solve problems. Some of them say that we need to look at them from a different perspective. I feel that most of the times we are stuck with our existing knowledge. It is at this time that a diverse knowledge helps us. By reading a lot more on varied and diverse subjects and environments, our perception is increased a diverse way. It is with this knowledge that we can try to solve the problems in an innovative way. Steve Jobs once mentioned that we need to have a lot of varied and diversified experiences in our lives to come up with innovative ideas. I believe he meant that we need to have a diversified knowledge and not to get stuck in the silos.

So are we reading enough? :-)

iPhone and the hype factor

Over the past few months, any person who is remotely in touch with the tech news has definitely heard or seen something about the next iPhone. Yeah, I myself am super excited about it. Or am I really? This is a thought lurking around in my mind for some time now. So as usual, I thought it over, and here are some of my reasons.


I love reading news about new technology, and I'm sure there's nothing more circulating than the news about the new iPhone. Yeah, as the day approaches, at least one article pops up in the media. Guesses, guesses and guesses. iPhone5, iPhone4s, iPhone4G and so on. This sort of hype is definitely good and keeps the readers interested - for a while. And then it gets irritating. To the point that you don't care about them anymore. So why, especially in the case of iPhone[5/4S/4G] is this hype less interesting? Well I believe its because of the following reasons.


First of all, what makes a product super cool? Hardware along with the software, right? In the current case of next gen iPhone, the software to be bundled has already been announced. So half the suspense is uncovered. Or, in my opinion, most of the suspense. Why? Because in today's ever changing market of hardware, its the software that comes along that creates the 'wow' factor. Not clear? Lets see. According to the stories, the next iPhone would probably feature better processor, better camera, bigger screen, thinner form factor, etc. all of which are currently available in the market. So yeah, frankly, there's nothing new. But yeah, again, its the software in synergy with the hardware that creates wonders. Now this, in my opinion, is what Apple holds for its users in the next release of their iPhone. So there are just a few pieces left to finish the amazing Apple puzzle for the next phone.


Now, may be I'm a little over thinking, but hey its Apple - they can come up with something radically different, and I'm definitely looking forward for the event.

One subject at a time

I am poor at Math. Not that I did not like that subject, but its just that there were other factors that did not make me incline toward Math. But hey, this post is not about Math per se or about my interests in academics. This is a post about some thoughts which I think could have been the reason why we do not excel at some subjects.


To start off, I agree that there are a lot of things that contribute toward excellence in a particular subject. First and foremost being the interest in that subject itself; and not to forget the passion we show toward learning that subject. But could there be other reasons which would prevent us from excelling at a subject? What if we do have the interest but still do not get to pursue it more rigorously? Pondering on this thought led me into a different direction and gave me a whole new perspective into our learning process itself.


Let me start in the reverse chronological order. As we grow up and pursue our higher studies (e.g. Masters and PhD), we narrow our focus to a few subjects, mostly one. Now there's a slight clarification that I consider important to make - 'subject' here means a whole different area of learning such as Computer Science, Biology, Psychology, etc. and not the sub divisions within them viz. Databases, Operating Systems, Cognitive Psychology, etc. So, as we study these subjects in more detail, what we are actually doing is dedicating our time almost entirely on that one subject. This in turn leads to mastery in that subject eventually. This can be refined to the sub divisions of a subject too. This is not a theory I made up myself, you can find it by going through the lives of great achievers.


Now lets get a bit younger, shall we? Back to our pre-university or +2 classes. What was the number of different 'subject's we studied then? 5? 6? How hard was it for you to juggle among those subjects? Definitely not an easy task, right? Its justified to say that not all of us can excel at all the subjects given all this juggling to be done. I'm not making an excuse here for not becoming good at any particular subject, but its just the fact that we need to give a thought about. I would not bother going to much younger classes where we had almost like 6-7 subjects - all demanding equal attention.


No, I am not pointing to any glitches/faults in our education system. Our education system is a very good one, and I believe there are reasons why we had so many subjects. One might say that it was to give an idea into different avenues which we could explore later on in your life. But my point is, why don't we focus early on in our education more or rather entirely on one particular subject like we do later? Of course this might not be a good idea at all, let alone a perfect one. I am not even proposing this should be put into action. Imagine the prospects of this thought taking shape - we can learn all we want about a subject to our heart's content. But what if you get bored of it? you might ask. Well, that's what hobbies are for :)


What do you say? One subject at a time.

Feeling of loss

It's been a long time since I wrote up something here and what better than writing about the most authentic, common feeling we all have - loss. By the way, a little foreword before I start: this post has nothing to do with my current state of mind or heart or what ever. So take out any thoughts about that and enjoy the post :)


To start off, of late I have been reading a lot of books on human behavior, behavioral economics, human psychology - no deep stuff, just the daily life activities and incidents which have been studied by eminent people in a more scientific way. I will list down some of the books at the end of this post so you can have a share of the excitement :)


'We humans are basically loss averse' - this is a common conclusion that you will come across in most of the books on human behavior. Yes, we do not like loss, considering loss of any thing and in any magnitude. This is something we face so often in our daily life that we often neglect this as a feeling sometimes. Just check how many times you get that feeling tomorrow and I am sure you'll be surprised yourself. One of the best examples is buying a costly phone. You know that it'll be well worth the price, but you still hesitate to buy it because you are worried about the cost - which is basically worry about loss of money. What's your story?


So like any scientific study, psychologists and behavioral economists have tried to analyze this feeling in much detail. The following text talks about some broad conclusions they came up with.


First and the most common thing they attribute the genesis of this feeling of loss is the feeling of ownership( the feeling of something belonging to me/ feeling of mine). Yes, it is the very feeling which makes us happy about anything in our lives. Don't believe me? Try recollecting things you really like in your life, and you will find your ownership of those things in varying proportions. When we are in ownership of things, we feel in control. Once we lose the ownership, the feeling of loss starts slowly. The more you think of it, the deeper it grows. Loss of time is a related thought. Now this is just one side of a coin.


Somewhat related to this feeling of ownership is the feeling of love. We fall in love all the time with something we own, and that's very natural of us. Over a period of time, as love grows and matures, our bonding with things/beings increases, naturally again. And then the inevitable happens, and then enters our old 'feeling' - loss. As you would have guessed, the magnitude of this feeling of loss is almost directly proportional to the magnitude of our feeling of love toward that object, sometime its even non-linear ;)


There is one more factor which I feel could be one of the causes of this feeling. These days our information consists of a lot of motivational talk, how to be successful, hopeful, stay positive, etc. Though this is good, I feel it is also inculcating the feeling of loss inherently and indirectly within us. Today's competition is yet another factor affecting our daily decisions. Combine this with all the background voice of 'self-help', a small failure can lead to huge feeling of loss - enough to take lives.


So what is the solution, you ask? It's something which we have to come up with. One solution which is often prescribed is the concept of detachment. Difficult to achieve or even follow, we are humans after all right ;) But yes, this seems to be the proven way of mitigating ourselves from the feelings of loss. It is often asked to be rational to the situations, but I've found it to be easier said than done. So yeah, you now have the formula for success, hopefully :)


So in the end, am I saying that this feeling is bad? Something which we have to overcome? Absolutely not!!! This is one of the most natural feelings among others. Rationally speaking, what you have lost is lost, there's no point in brooding over it. All I say is just observe and analyze this feeling more, you might explore a lot more of yourself :)


Happy feeling :)


Following is the list of books I read over the past few months:

1. Nudge by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler 
2. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
3. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
4. The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
5. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
6. The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely

2010 - an year

Its been a long time since I wrote my last post, and I think it was a review of the year - 2009. Well, this time, nothing was really so exciting when compared to 2009, but I think its a good thing to look back at things and learn something from them.

So 2010 started off with some usual idiotic New Year hype stuff at home (I don't understand why people 'celebrate' one more year). So essentially, my first day of 2010 was partially sleep deprived. But overall it went well since I got to meet my best friend after a long time. Later in the second month, after a couple of trials and journeys I got my Driving License (I know its not a big deal, nevertheless a 'yay' for that!).

The third month brought some unexpected changes to my work place - serial resignations from my team mates. I had no idea why they quit all at once, but I was later enlightened by my ex-colleague. But otherwise things went smooth. Had to learn things which were totally unrelated to my past study and work, but it was OK. I guess I did a good job of it - so they say. Somehow my work was not continuous, I had to wait for different things and reasons.

Then there was a not-so-good time. I had two accidents in the span of 24 hours - a bike and an office bus. And then TECh Days happened. This gave me an opportunity to give my first Tech talk at the office, it was just awesome!

After that, life was pretty much plain, nothing really interesting happened. Hope this year brings new opportunities.

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year, have fun, stay safe.

2009 – the year that was

As another year comes to an end trying to inscribe the good memories and farewell the not-so-good ones it gave along the way, I wanted to sit back and ponder upon what really happened in a 365 year journey(well almost). And as I started to gather some thoughts from my poor memory, I realized that this was not just an year, it was an experience that I would never forget in my life; for I learnt some of the most important lessons in life…

Work, pain, joy
My new years, unlike others’, are generally not so enthusiastic; but this was different. I was going to my first job (well Internship technically)! After 23 years, I would be landing in a company! The very thought of it filled my New Year day with all the enthu and zeal. Yeah, I did my internship at Motorola India Research Labs, Bangalore. It was at this place that I had my first experiences of a ‘real corporate world’. “They say you never forget your first job”. Well after hearing this in one of my favorite TV series, I thought it doesn’t sound so real. But, this job remains to be my ever lasting memory. Ofcourse it was not all roses; I had to learn something totally out of my knowledge, had to work with some very annoying devices, had to code in C (I used to loathe working in it earlier); but like they say, the more you run away from something, the more of it you get. 6 months of all the effort was made an ease, thanks to my mentor and the team. I also witnessed a harsh reality of professional life – job termination, how companies ruthlessly fire people in the name of cost cutting.

Life outside college
Almost every time I met some senior at college, they used to say that life is good as long as you are in the safe hands of college (and hostel tooJ). We thought – heck, we’ll have money, no assignments and tests and a whole lot of freedom. But little did we realize that those assignments were far better to tackle than the outside world, accepting the fact in a hard way; as always, life teaches you in a hard way! Some of my woes were solved since I stayed at my cousin’s place but that made way for a different problem – commutation. With 6 buses a day to change and 4 hrs to spend in transit, that was one helluva ride. But in a way that taught me to be more attentive and punctual.

Joy, fate and luck
It was all good until the completion of internship. We had a great reason to celebrate as we would be getting our M.Tech degree after 2 years of hardwork. But the bigger reason to worry about was our job. Thanks to the economic recession, we saw the worst campus placement ever in the history of our college. It was something we never expected. Despite of all the brand name and degree, we had to remain jobless for a very long time. It was during this time that I experienced my first ‘joblessness’. Everywhere I went, people were cursing the IT industry and offering free and completely unsolicited advices to join banks, power plants, what not. Damn! Some of the brightest minds had to struggle a lot to end in a job, let alone a ‘decent-pay’ job. After four months of waiting I finally got into a company. Those four months made me realize the single most important factor in success – luck. You just have to give in to it.

Even now it’s not so rosy life for some of my friends, but we all have started to accept the hard realities of life. Bill Gates once mentioned ‘Life is not fair. Get used to it’. And this year has taught me the same in more ways than one…