On the way to "Asking Right Questions"

As a follow up to my previous post, i would like share my progress on my effort to ask right questions. So far i have read around five chapters. I already got the feeling that i should read the book again [this is the book that i m talking about. seems like 10th edition is out but i m reading 9th edition that i bought a couple years back].

First two chapters are general that talks about the benefits of asking questions and critical thinking as a social activity. I think, these two chapters are placed well which give us motivation to continue reading. I am a soft of guy who would like to work with book using exercises. First 20 pages of the book are theory and i m glad that it is small.

The real fun begins from chapter 3.

Chapter 3 talks about finding the issue and the conclusion in a speech or material. For many of us who are grown up and literate, i feel that finding the issue and conclusion is simple but yet after reading this chapter i felt i have learnt more. I got to know what are the aspects i should do while reading a material.

Chapter 4 talks about the reasons. By reading a material we wear the hat of the author and we tend to bury ourselves in his shoes or go against it (we take positions based on whether or not we buy the author's point or it could be due to our very own conditioning). We hardly find the reasons for the conclusion. This chapter gives us the process of finding "reasons". Only when we find reasons, we learn from the material. The reasons are critical for continuous learning.

Chapter 5 has some excellent material. It talks about dissecting the material given. It shows us how to find ambiguity. By ambiguity i mean anything that is hard to be believed without giving enough data points or research.

I have found examples exercises in all the chapters that hand holds us [which do provide hands-on on the topics]

More learning and more excitement. Will keep you posted on "asking right questions"

 

Back on Track - Reading Books

It is a while (may be close 6 months) since i touched a book [not literally though, i touched them when we shifted to new home as i had to physically touch them for arranging]. I particularly liked this activity. It gave me a guilty feeling. It appeared to me as if the books were saying, "why are you neglecting me? Had i been bought somebody else, would have felt the human touch". So, i thought, i should read them one by one. So, all the books in my cupboard are going to be happy :-)

After careful thinking, i thought i should read "Asking The Right Questions, A Guide to Critical Thinking". I read couple of chapters of "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene (and i was unabated by my lack of understanding on superstring theory) before jumping into "Asking Right Questions". I thought the universe can wait till i correct my thinking flaws :-)

The book "Asking The Right Questions" promises to improve critical thinking for those of you who think critically and to make people like me to think critically (who are not thinking critically or who do not know how to think or forgot it due getting married). So, in next few weeks, i m going to be a superman with my critical thinking :-)

On a serious note, i am glad that i bought the book. After reading couple of chapters, i felt that this book is written exclusively for me (to fix flaws in my thinking). Once i read it completely and put some of the concepts in practice, i shall share my experience with you. You can also become superman.

Provoke to get a better feedback

You scratch my back and i, surely without fail, can scratch your back. It is professional kick back and it is mutually beneficial. It is dangerous than any scam because you officially institutionalize "back scratching". Everyone knows yet none flags. Kick backs are so sweet. It gives you a feel that the benefits of kick backs outweighs the sweat that you must shed to fix something {in most cases, our attitude}.

Very few and (really) only very few of us provoke people to give great/blunt feedback. Some of us, just love to hear complaints. Provoke people to give great feedback so that both the giver and receiver steps out of their respective comfort zone. The comfort zone of giving the same feedback and the comfort zone of getting the same yummy feedback.

Provoke and question the feedback until it is blunt.

If you are a hero @ work

There are two ways to work and technically both ways can yield same results visibly.

If you wanna be a hero, you make a lot of noise, trying to be relevant by being irrelevant, always trying to be little far from reality, overly obsessed with perfectionism (and bosses) and hyper-reactive.

The other way to work is by just being simple, making mistakes and introspecting those mistakes and little pragmatic.

Most of us tend to be of mixed type, doing both but the question is ratio. It could be 9:1, 5:5 or 0:10.

The ratio decides the destiny and the happiness that we derive out of work.

What is Experience

Yesterday, Sandeep and I had a long discussion on "what is experience". Here is what we came up with.

We start our career with equal potential. Experience is how we mobilize our potential. It is how we convert our potential (the energy we posses by virtue of being human, engineer etc) to action (how we mobilize the potential to get results) decides the depth of our experience. The conversion factor differs and so is over experience/learning. Experience obeys law of conservation of energy. The energy neither be created nor destroyed but transformed from one form to another form.

In general, potential diminishes as experience grows and kinetic increases with experience (for most of us). We become more action oriented with experience.

We came up with the following diagram during our chat.

What is Time & Its Properties - A Question

This post doesn't have an answer. It is just a question :-)

Recently and quite by accident, i happen to watch one of the documentaries on theory of relativity. While i never completely understood the theory of relativity either at school or now, the concept of "speed" and its effects on "time" was slightly making sense. I would like to share a couple of interesting information i gathered in internet and finally my question.

There are many arguments that the time is a recent concept which exists only for past fifteen billion years - the time from which this universe is existing. The existence of universe and the existence of time is key. The time doesn't make sense when there is no universe because universe is made of particles and if there is no universe there won't be particles and hence there won't be "the time".

Here goes another concept. We are in milky galaxy. A galaxy consists of many stars and each star can possibly have many solar systems. In our galaxy itself there could be more solar systems. There are lot of galaxies. All the galaxies form this universe which we are in. There is a theory that says there could be more such universe closer to us that are separated by a different dimension. (not necessarily by unit of space, to put it simply and for the sake of understanding, a dimension can be distance. the universes can be separated by an inch. but it may be possibility that we don't yet invented that dimension).

We have to be clear that time is not years, months, days, hours, minutes or seconds. Time is not related to number of times earth or planet revolves around the sun. They are unit of time that we use to express time.

So, even if we assume that we reasonably understood the concept of time in this universe, how can we define or comprehend time in other universes if there exist any.

Probably, that is why Albert Einstein said - "Imagination is more important than knowledge".

Now, i feel that physics, astro-physics and cosmology together with mathematics is parent of other inventions. Quite intriguing. Finally i would like to end this article with a piece of quote by Albert Einstein.

Try Not to Become Something, Be What You Are

Evolution is the key. As i posted sometime back, the egg can become chick only when it allows evolution. Either evolution or extinction cannot be forced or predicted or tracked. The evolution happens over a period of time under certain conditions. We alter the conditions that incubates/affects positively or affects negatively the process of evolution. The term evolution signifies the never ending journey and the evolution is not starting from point a and reaching point b. The evolution is a journey that passes through point a, point b and so on.

The obsession on wanting to become something is going to take us to the place much slower than what we think and the evolution (the naturally process) will take us much faster than we think.

So, try not to become something, but stay what you are. Let the evolution transform you.

Verify Everything - Feel It Before Accepting

The self realization has never been a group work. It is an individual's efforts towards knowing himself. The object painted by society is just the view of the society. It is framed by people like you and me. So, there is every possibility that it is wrong. Because, human errors are natural. However the society makes every attempt to make you to accept its view and to be ingrained in its view leading to deep conditioning. The society (may it be the society we live, work, party, religion and many other groups) has a deep conspiracy. The conspiracy of not to allow us to think. Society says to man, I will allow you to think but you have to think the way I want you to think.

As man grows, his views about world widens. He becomes knowledge base and his knowledge is dangerous because his knowledge was never verified/validated by him. But he simply endorse it. He conditions you and then he comes to you with a group, the group conditions you. Because, the group feels the majority makes them right. So, he conditions you. If you get conditioned the society wins, you lose and if you don't condition yourself the society loses and you win. It is all about survival of the stronger. So far, mostly the man lost.

When you are a child, you questioned everything. You didn't think about the relevance of a question. But you just question. You get worldly experience by asking questions on the things you perceive through your senses. When you are a child, you verify everything. You give very first hand information. When you say, the fire will be hot, you experienced by touching it and you say with confidence. Thats why the child never say there exists a God (but the parents make him to say so). Verification is key to contemporary thinking. If you don't verify something, you cannot endorse it. If you endorse something without verification then it is conditioning. 

Verification is key to self realization.

Have a Great Monday and Fantastic Week.

Questions Are Pointers and Answers Are Dead End

How will you earn a million rupees is next two years? Assume that someone is asking this question to you or you are asking this question to yourself. If we fixate our focus on finding answers, we will probably find some answers that are widely accepted. When we start decomposing a question into many questions and when we question the relevancy of the question, we will find much better questions that provokes thinking. Each question shape up thinking and thinking helps us to anticipate probables. Most of the man made events in this world are non deterministic and only way that we can sail through is by anticipation. Questions helps us to anticipate probables. Only when we question, our ignorance surfaces and only when our ignorance crops up we make an initiative to learn and only when we learn we ask more questions. This is never ending cycle and probably ends when we cease.

If you keep asking questions, when you will find answers? Keep questioning doesn't signify  the absence of answers and in fact each question will have answer. The key here is to derive questions out of each answers and the objective is to move beyond the obvious and abstract ideas. If you look at questions, they are pointers and they shape our thinking. But definitive answers are dead ends. It is not a real dead end. It is our mental condition, limitation and satisfaction on the answer.

So, the questions are pointers for reproductive thinking and definitive answers are dead end towards reproductive thinking.

Be Nude to Open Your Mind

The other day my three year old nephew came out of the bathroom and was jumping up and down. Yeah, he was making me happy, he was dancing, singing, playing (and of course teaching). When it comes to performance (giving a damn hard try), my nephew never minds whether he wears his trousers or not. He just gives a try (sometimes with dress, sometimes half nude and sometimes full nude). His sheer passion to try and get involved is simply amazing. It is when I saw him in a different perspective, I saw a teacher in him (I will tell this story sometime later). He was showing me a way to be a top performer (not in someone's perspective but from the perspective of oneself).

We wear dress in the form of conditioning. This conditioning helps us (is it really help?) to form perception and the perception takes us towards the judgment and then action. So, based on your conditioning and how close you are conditioned to the accepted level of conditioning of the society (or people around you), you become a super star in the eyes of others. So, you will be given award or outstanding award simply because you are obedient.

Being obedient is a nasty thing and that shows that you are not learning (by obedience, I mean asking questions about the accepted norms of the society. By obedience, I don't mean politeness). This is exactly going against the nature and is a non-performance. You are inactive by simply accepting what others say. The performance is born when you become nude that is when you drop your conditioning and establish your own view about things like a child.

On a lighter note (but real incident),

Employee: No one hears my views.
HR: We have open door policy. We always encourage people to ask questions.
Employee: Doors are open but minds are closed.
HR: ????? :-(

Reinventing Myself - Asking Questions

I never thought that I would become such a waste. A couple of days back, when I was talking to my father about my childhood, he told me that I used to ask a lot of questions. He also told me (and I still vaguely remember) that I used to experiment a lot with electric switches and would be playing with 230V, 5A AC power.

Over a period of time, I totally lost myself. I did not ask questions and I did not experiment. Experimenting things and asking questions go hand in hand. When you have questions, we used to experiment and when we experiment things we tend to get a lot of questions. Experimentation together with questioning curiosity what is needed for life - may it be professional career or our personal lives.

The decisions come out of experimentation and outcome of asking several questions is certainly thought through and likely to yield more results. I learned it again couple of months back and I m currently going through a personal journey of reinventing my childhood. I hope that this journey will be fruitful and transform me.