Toys are us

Does the title ring any bells?  Yes, it sounds similar to an American retail store exclusively for toys (http://www.toysrus.com). But this post is not about that store or its counter parts. Rather, it's about what they sell - toys :) Sound fun? read on!


Back when we were kids, I am sure, all of us would have had toys - big, small, noisy, stuffy, glowy, scary, cute, guess I lost you.. :)  There was an amazing sense of joy and happiness in being with them. Remember how we used to have them next to us in the bed? That fantastic feeling when your super hero saved the world from the wild and ferocious mammals and dinosaurs? Priceless! Or when your cute little Barbie was awarded the beauty pageant? A very proud moment indeed, right!! And long before you actually became an engineer and built stuff, your structural marvels won the best design award. Now that's definitely an achievement!!!


But then, as it should have been, growth happened. We all became old, studied hard, became the able sons and daughters ready to take on the world with skills and talent. Priorities changed and soon, our super heroes and best friends reached the corners of the shelves, waiting to be called for and cuddled. Watches, wallets, perfumes and yeah the jewellery de-throwned our little heroes and princesses, leaving them to dust. 'We need to grow up', you might say, but I don't think the kid in us should. Why, you ask?


There's a book that I read some time ago, 'The Present' by Spencer Johnson in which he asks as to remind ourselves of our childhood, the days when we were the best, the amount of confidence we had, the fearlessness in order to rejuvenate ourselves with energy. I believe it's certainly true of all of us, a lot of problems can be overcome that way. Now I am not saying we should be childish in our daily lives, but a little bit of kiddish ideas do help :)


Curiosity. The one factor which has enabled the humans to achieve so much - technological advancements, human well being, revolutionary inventions and innovations. The seeds of which were sown early in our childhood. The eternal curiosity that kept us awake till late nights tinkering with that new toy gifted by dad figuring out how it works :) As we have grown, I personally feel many of us have lost that streak of curiosity that is one of the foundations of joy and excitement. A lot of times, we take things for granted which if avoided by curiosity can keep us on the edge of excitement. After all, there's so much this world has to offer us, right!


Long ago when I was a kid, there was an ad by Nokia which featured adults engrossed in playing games in their mobile phones. It even featured Mr. Bill Clinton (if I remember correctly) sitting at a lake side his trousers rolled up, playing a game on his Nokia mobile like a child. At the end of the ad, there was a statement "There's a child in everyone of us eager to play. That's why we've put them in our phones too". Now though it's a marketing trick by Nokia, what they did mention in their quote is true. There definitely is a child in everyone of us, waiting to come out and play!


Let's be curious again, let's become a child again :)

tuesdays with Morrie

It's not often that you come across a book that touches you to the very core of your self. The one book which forces you to think and act upon later. I am really glad to say that today, after a long time, I read one such book - 'tuesdays with Morrie' by Mitch Albom. The first such book was 'The Monk who sold his Ferrari' by Robin Sharma. This post is not a comprehensive review of that book per se, but I wanted to share my thoughts on it and some other things too.


To start off, this book is the dialog between a teacher and a student. What's so special or interesting about this dialog is its timing. It happens during the last days in the life of the teacher. This might remind us of similar works by Randy Pausch and may be even Steve Jobs. But what is truly captivating about this book is the point of focus, the central theme around which the whole dialog proceeds. Given the timing of the dialog, as you might have guessed it, this whole dialog revolves around the concept of death. Sounds dramatic, right? 


If you have heard of the Stanford Commencement speech by Steve Jobs in 2005, Steve Jobs talks about death as one of his stories. He also mentions all his realizations related to death as a result of his close encounter with it. Now imagine the realizations of a person who knows he is going to die in a few months. This book talks about all such little nuggets of wisdom in very simple and elegant words. If you are wondering about the topics he chose to talk about, don't push yourself much, they are the most fundamental concepts we all struggle to find answers to - regrets, money, forgiveness, love, family, emotions, etc.


As you read the book further, a kind of feeling starts slowly in your mind which basically says 'hey, I've come across this stuff before in our scriptures'. Yes, interestingly, all of the points of wisdom which Morrie talks in the book are present in our scriptures, vedas, upanishads etc. and I myself have heard/read about them a lot of times. The point is, the words in this book, for some reason went deep into me than anything else earlier. Eventually, I got this question - why is the wisdom in our books not so simple? If the whole point of having wisdom is to enlighten others and help them make their lives better, why not present it in a simple way?A lot of texts on spirituality and wisdom that I have come across are either too abstract or too complicated. May be I have not come across a correct book yet, or may be I am being too judgmental. If someone has some books in mind, please let me know, I'll be really thankful to you.


Speaking of thanks, I express my heartfelt thanks to my friend Ramya for pointing me to this book.


Good day and happy reading!


Some more sources of such wisdom:
Tiny Buddha
Zen Habits

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