Learning and Rules of Brain

For quite sometime, i have taken up reading quite seriously. All the credits should go to OpenGyan. In order to prepare the content and aid me in delivery of workshops, i tend to read books (most of them are bibles and it needs at least few years to completely understand the content and solve the exercises in the books). For example, when i started to design workshop on Linux, it was mostly my experience along with gathering of information from "man" pages. I later found that a lot of coherency can be brought to the presentation, workshops and its contents if i follow a standard text book. It has couple of advantages. We tend to know ahead of time what can be covered in a days time and helps me in structuring my workshops. The second, sweet and big take away is that i tend to read a lot of material which in turn makes me to know little more. Because of this approach, my learning is incremental and i tend to know how the students will struggle if just dump everything in single shot. So, my effort would be to explain them what is required to understand a topic, do some experiments and give them few case studies. Finally get their feedback to fine tune the content. 

In this process i understood the importance of revision and its short-term and long term-benefits which is outlined in one of the interesting books that i read a while ago - Brain Rules. In order to fix the issues in the content and my understanding, i need to reread the text books and correct my understanding. When i read it again, i tend to get a feeling that my real learning starts today as i would learn something little deeper and the information seems to be wired strongly. This kind of makes me to take the classes at a relative ease (for the ones that i revise and i continue to struggle until i find the resonance ;-)).

There is a scientific way to know how brain works and the efficiency of the brain can be increased (btw, it works for only who has it and who uses it but it can't do any magic if you dont have it or use it, wow what a pun ;-)). Brain Rules makes sense now and if you are interested in developing your brain, check out this, this and the video below.

Learn the rules of brain, and you won't regret it.

Have a good Sunday or a great week ahead if you are reading this on Monday :-)

Success And Failures

To be successful, you just need one success.

To be successful consistently, you need numerous failures and phenomenal failures.

The failures are bound to happen when you make those baby steps.

So, when you fail. Just get up and go ahead.

Reason of why we are not excelling

Is there a reason for why we aren't excelling?

Why we don't do programming (let us say work) little better? Why aren't we little nicer to others? Why are we taking everyone for granted? Why do we think that we are correct (not always but 110% of times)?

We pity a lot - not on others but on ourselves. The bigger world doesn't expect us to be bigger, greater or nicer, in fact the world doesn't need us to be great. It never cares for individuals. It just extinguishes the matter that is not relevant. The world keeps changing its skin like a snake. If you don't excel in your thinking, you are gone, you become history.

We fail to exist because we fail to excel. We fail to excel simply because we are clever, just clever enough to find a reason to fool around like - i didn't have good primary education, i m a villager, my boss is not great, i don't have a corpus to spin off a start-up. All these can true. Even if these are true, it doesn't really affect one. It is the self-pity and finding reasons that affects us the most.

I hope, one day, i will come out of this self pity and start doing something meaningful to just prove to myself and simply enjoy my drive in life journey.

Steep, Steep, Steep

There are two types of work.

The first type is to take up something that appears to be steep (learning curve) but isn't steep really when you sit back and reflect. We can take up this type of work just to impress others or ourselves (and it would pay off well). The work that you are accustomed with also falls in this category. People will fake that they are recognizing you when there isn't so much to recognize.

The second type of work is the real steep one. If you choose this work, you should be ready to fail because you are stretching your elastic limit and there is whole a lot of possibility of you being torn apart (and there is equal possibility of you stretching your limits consistently).

Choosing the type of work is really a choice, the choice you make everyday and your choice decides your experience.

Being with RIGHT GUY and turning UPSIDE DOWN

Changing the status quo needs a vision. You got to know where you want to go. It is your "point zero".

Only then comes the resources. Most of the times, you just don't commit to a change initiative thinking of resources. Resources are assumed to be available when you need them.

If you are convinced enough that you have to change and facilitate a change, the next important thing is being with RIGHT people. I m not saying you need to be with a visionary. I m just saying that you got to be with someone who sees tomorrow, next month or probably next couple of years. The way he is seeing may not be consistent. But the key is seeing tomorrow.

As long as he sees "some tomorrow", he is the guy and he is going to question you and probably shake things up to make tomorrow little better.

Be with RIGHT guy and turning UPSIDE DOWN would be a wonderful experience. You will simply love being part of such a change.

Your age means nothing to people

The days have changed. People generally don't accept things. Don't think that they don't trust you. They test it, explore it and experience it. Good thing?

It applies to people too.

Don't expect people to follow you just by your age (either at home or work).

People will like you and people will respect you. Likes and Respects are given your personality and age. It is different. It is purely because we are social.

People follow those who think, ask questions and set them directions (but not actually directing them how to do it).

The age and thinking have little relation. Yes, it is related to extent to which the biologically our brain starts to develop (biologically the human brain development start prenatal, every human being has an opportunity to be a thinker even before they are born). Once it is developed well, it depends on how you use it.

(Technically and practically) A child can think much better than grown-ups.


So, your age means nothing to people but your thinking REALLY MATTERS.

Privilege Vs Proud

When someone look up to you to enhance their thinking, it is not proud moment but rather a privileged moment.

Not all do it. It is not because that it is not innate. It is because we fail to recognize them - guys who honestly want to improve their thinking. If we recognize, we add value to them and to ourselves.

And we have to believe (and it is truth too), improving others thinking is two way street. Don't think that you are only improving them. Their mere honest and commitment in fact enhances your thinking. So, enhancing the thinking can only be MUTUAL (it is NOT one-way street) - congregation of thinkers.

Just absorb it to overcome it

Wishing you very happy Pongal & Sankaranti.

For the past two days, i had a terrible encounter with fever. I think, it was lesser than 100 degree Fahrenheit till last afternoon and it shot up to 102 midnight. I just wanted to try not to see a doctor and get the medicines. I just had a Crocin and decided not to consume it again. Not this time. I had lot of disturbances in my sleep and woke up every 3 hours and it seemed like i enjoy the fever. As i m writing this, i feel that my fever has receded without any medicines (except one Crocin). I just had few servings of Samahan (an ayurvedic preparation). I think, i m in a better shape today and most importantly with a better immune system (which would heal my body for an ordinary fever).

What about building our emotional and psychological immune system? What could build a better immune system?  Failures and Mistakes. When we fail, i think, we fail in achieving expected results and we don't actually care about or recognize the good it causes. By our failures and mistakes, Aren't we building our immune systems? Aren't we going to get better and slated to do well to reach expected results the next time? Aren't we become less fragile? Aren't we become less fearful of the failures?

I think, my recent encounter with fever taught me a lesson - just absorb it and you will overcome it.

Disclaimer: I handled my fever in a weird way and i don't recommend you to try it out. It is my perception that i got better by not taking medicines for an ordinary fever. If it had been a much complicated disease or my fever got into advanced state, i would generally consult the physician and consume the medicines that she would prescribe.

I wish i could be wisest

I wish i could be wisest, but until i become one (remote possibility), i prefer to be foolish.

I wish i could behave like a grown-up, but until it comes naturally to me, i prefer to be like a child.

I wish i could write little better (particularly my posts here), i can just copy here, copy there and sound like a thinker. I wanted to be original but not a photocopy. Until it comes naturally to me, i prefer to stay foolish & half-baked.


But the point is, i like to be looked at as a fool and i feel so proud to be such a fool.

Idea of Cheap and Free

Linux is free but it is solid operating system, so it is not cheap.

Wikipedia is free but it is not cheap (the amount of information and quality is simply amazing).

Advise in StackOverflow is free but we never say/feel it is cheap.

Free is something valuable you give with "no strings attached" to convey that you value the relationship and association. If all the free you give is not valuable (or literally of no use), then the free becomes cheap. It, then, spoils the relationship/association.

Certainly, free and cheap are two different/extreme/opposite experiences.

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.

2011 - Looking back & Looking forward

I never intended to write something describing what i did the past year. But a quick thought arose now. I have two things to share that i feel so happy about it. One that happened at work and another in life (i should say internet life, as each of us have two personal lives - one in internet and another ordinary/common life :-))

By the starting of 2011, i took up something at work and i feel that though it is not super hit, i realized that i m playing the game to my strengths. All the situations thought me that i should always be level headed. Sometimes, i felt the situations are custom crafted to make by temper to reach its tipping point. Unlike my usual thing, i somehow played by emotions low. Towards the end of the year, i really liked the way i handled things. I only hope that i should improve from here. It was an year of low profile and great learning (particularly the time i spent with fresh professionals just out of college).

Next, let me talk my internet life. When you want to know about something, i think usually we hit Google and most likely the first link would be LinkedIn and Facebook (if you are searching for people) and Wikipedia if you are looking for informative articles. Wikipedia is beyond Encyclopedia and it gives us authentic information. This year i contributed towards Wikipedia fund to keep it for free and i m looking forward to next year (and hopefully, i m planning to double my contributions). When you have a great place to look for information and when the people wiser than you writing/building it, it makes sense to contribute and it is wonderful feeling being part such an initiative.

For the next year, i think i should blog more (with interesting topics) and do something that makes me feel that i m constantly stretching my limits.

I constantly think about this blog and my readers who constantly make me better everyday and each time i blog.

For all the wonderful readers, wishing you a very happy new year. I m looking forward for the new year to learn more. Together, let us learn more.

Effort towards Perfection

Is it possible for a fresher or a newly formed company (any new entrant) to stand out and highly regarded among professionals (even among professionals with few years of experience)? I think, standing out in the crowd is no way related to how old are you. There isn't any age factor involved.

Standing out is the result of an attempt (even a failed attempt) towards perfection. In order to move towards perfection or excellence, you need a thought that perfection/excellence is a necessity (and not a value-add) and once you feel/absorb that the value is inherent in you. Perfection/excellence is not a stretch goal but an action, may be a base thing which you are supposed to do and a thing that you should naturally do.

I can't wait more to write this post after watching this video.

Check this out

After a while things go real hard

It appears to me that i stopped blogging forever. I literally can't think what to write. It is over a month i tried to post something here. The past two months have been so engaging and lot of events. I felt that i lost touch and became irrelevant. I needed so much courage to write this post because i honestly think that every post should add value to me and at least to my eyes i should feel that my thinking is slightly getting better. This self imposed exile of keeping away from my blog was not so easy. I m back and i think i should be consistent.

Here comes the real learning. The manager typically delegates work sacrificing hands-on. Though the delegation helps and often needed when one moves up, being hands-on is equally important. I m not here to say that you need to strike balance as i think that such balance never exist in reality. All i m saying is "dont lose touch". Why?

Hands-on experience helps in better abstraction. Abstraction is more meaningful only if one is consistently gets his/her hands dirt. Without hands-on, the abstraction deviates from its course and it turns out to be a poor abstraction. The poor abstraction gives us meaningless decisions and from there the things go real hard. From empowerment, people move towards irresponsibility and abandonment without their own knowledge simply because they are far from reality and most of their decisions/thinking will become outdated.

Why Contemporary Leadership?

In the ancient times, when locomotive motor was not invented, people who could afford, traveled using bullock carts and the people who weren't able to afford a pair of horses and cart traveled by legs. After the invention of motor and after having undergone industrial revolution, people travel by cars or public transportation. The means of transport has changed but the travel hasn't (moving from one point to another point).

Today, many of the organizations are finding ways for transportation of their organizations from point a (current state) to point b (the transformation state) and they are ready to do anything that ought to be done. They are not ready to travel using bullock carts. I think criticisms and cranky jokes of obsessed Gen Xs on Gen Y are fading away and by now people who will be getting old in near future have to anyway deal with Gen Ys by their sheer numbers. If they continue to criticize, i think it is not going to help the organization at large. Any organization needs contemporary ways of brining in more effectiveness.

These days, the people who join workplace (predominantly often called as Gen Ys) are value conscious and by their virtue of exposure, they tend to make decisions based on how things affect them. We can't question and debate on their way of thinking because this thinking is not unique to Gen Ys. It is part of human evolution. The evolution says, the size of human brain shrinks but its processing power increase every day and the way a 22 year old youth thought 20 years back and the way in which modern day youth thinks varies (greatly?).

While we talk about culture, workplace ethics, work ethics or professionalism, we got to understand that those are things that were once practiced and if we get too much carried away (or adamant) with yesteryears, it will be living in the past or reliving the past and who knows we may fail utterly when we relive. Our thoughts, approach and the way we achieve the vision has to be contemporary. This has to be freshness.

While leading, we ought to be contemporary and forward looking taking good things of the past which just gives enough direction and propulsion needed for the escape velocity and to puts us into the orbit. 

Freshness, productive, creativity and innovation applies even for leadership.

Organizational Entropy

Entropy (thermodynamics) is the energy that is not available for any useful work. Entropy in software measures the degree to which it is unordered, degree to which it can't be maintained. Entropy in organization measures the degree to which the workforce is unfocused & unordered. Though the field of application is different, by the very definition we understand that entropy is not a thing to boast about. The system continue to go in favor of entropy unless it is taken out in the form of heat.

Entropy in organization implies that energy that is available and that will eventually be spent on matters that is not so useful to the organization either be it taking too much of tea for a prolonged period in cafe or putting up a strategy in a conference with tea (or beer). All these are efforts which won't necessarily be converted to results. The next question that may come you mind - "is entropy same as that of being unproductive?".

Being unproductive is the result of having an entropy at higher side. Productivity is a metric that is measured after the event has happened. You have to wait for a week, a month, a year or until you have next meeting. But entropy measures how much of energy you have and what portion of it will be spent on things that will have little to no impact.

I feel like measure on entropy, and trying to reduce it, is a proactive approach than doing with measuring productivity alone. You better remove entropy periodically. Keeping a check on entropy increases the awareness and anticipation which in turn increases the probability of producing productive work/results.

Either in software or organizations, the entropy has to be worked against.

Related Links

Entropy in Thermodynamics

Entropy in Software

Lesson Learnt from "Clean the Mess"

I had a wonderful experience today (Sunday, 26-Dec-2010). I took my nephew to a nearby super market. Being a Sunday evening, there were lot of people and even lot more in the billing counters. We were standing at 5th position waiting for our turn at one of the counters. There were many chocolates racks near the billing counters and those chocolates were kept there purposefully to make people standing in the counter to buy when they are waiting for their turn. While standing, i noticed two perk chocolates fallen off the shelf.

My nephew, while taking his chocolate disturbed couple of chocolates from the overloaded chocolates stacks. I had told him to place the fallen chocolates in its shelf. He did it many times as he was busy in choosing chocolates. All the times, he made sure that he kept the fallen ones on to the shelves. But his attention was not on the perk chocolates that had fallen off before we stood there. As an usual adult guy, i didn't try to bring his attention towards the two chocolates that fallen before. The simple philosophy was "i didn't create the mess (we didn't dislodge those two perk chocolates), why i should clear it".

After five minutes, i had a lesson from my young nephew. Finally, his eyes fell on the two chocolates. He picked up those two chocolates along with the new fallen ones. He cleared the whole mess. Though it was mess, i saw the mess differently than how he saw. For him, the mess is the mess and he has to clear it. For me, the part of the mess was due to me and the other part was someone else's. So, i dont need to clear others' mess.

Many times, we go to a training  to learn etiquette. But being sensitive and watching little ones will teach us what the trainings can't teach.

It was powerful learning and great life's experience. I aspire to take this learning forward till I die.

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.

Engage at Higher Level

For quite sometime, i have been reading books quiet consistently (probably at least 30 minutes before i sleep) but yet i m not consistent with my thoughts. So far, it still exists as an unaccomplished dream - the dream that i would cherish when i see through things beyond what is so obvious and penetrating through the subtle and be satisfied with the way i abstract things. Solving an unsolved problem through the one that i already solved is going to make me so happy, so satisfied, so brainy. Above all, i think that is the starting point of wisdom. Wisdom, not only helps me to solve unsolved problems but also helps me to stay calm during the period of time when the problem is getting resolved. An analogy is the process of farming. You sow the seed but yet wait until it reaps. This needs a bit of higher level of thinking.

Do we need people to just tell the direct things? Yes, we do need people to tell us direct things. But we don't want them to teach. Assume that i teach people how to do stuff by writing a book. Then the book becomes science even if the book is written on arts. The beauty of a subject lies in "art form". For example, let us assume that a world class painter writes a book on how to use colors in painting. The painter talks about science of mixing colors to produce new colors that expresses the mood in the painting. It is a science. But even the art has science and art forms. So is science, it has science and art forms. The wisdom helps us to take up something to art form.

The science form tells us how to do stuff, probably how to do stuff better. But it never tells us how to imagine with the help of stuff that we know. The science form of a subject cannot tell all sort of things that can possibly come out of science because the science has definite boundaries. On the other hand, the imagination yields new science. But only the art form begins the hope of the future and hence it has no limits. The art form is most compelling and forward looking. I m not trying to say that science isn't required. But i argue that science is not suffice. In order to understand the obvious and move beyond obvious is only possible when you take up something beyond "science form". Engaging at higher level helps in accomplishing this.

Engaging at higher level is a starting point of appreciating something in art form. The art form gives the guts feeling, tells you that you are on the right path and it helps you to unfold your future that you imagined few years back.

Engaging at higher level can take multiple forms like seeing things in different perspective, trying to digest the information and question the appearance of things. If we start accepting things as they are presented to us without employing (or at worst trying to think at higher level) any higher level of thinking, soon we will find stuck in rituals.

Finally, if you ask me what do i mean by higher level, it don't have a correct answer other than saying that it depends on individuals (and how they events are unfolded) and the way they abstract ideas.

About Image:

I was searching to get an image for this post and feel the above image with elephant trying to hide behind a small tree as apt one. Every day, we process a lot of information and tend to form fractured views about the things we read. We read a book, attend conferences and draw conclusions rather than drawing inferences. The beauty of inference is that it keeps changing as we think. :-) The image shows how we fail in thinking. Most of the times, we think that we are brainy but the other side clearly catches our ignorance because our ignorance is quiet visible.

Fair Share & Equilibrium With God

Everything (that you can measure) in this world has some quota. They food you eat, the number of hours you spend in sleep, the number of days you work, the number of days you think, the number of kilometers you walk, the number of good companies you have, the amount of garbage you can thrash on to the soil, the amount of air you can breathe in your lifetime and everything has a fixed quota. It is your choice on how to use it. A balanced life or an equilibrium is the outcome of mindful thinking, the awareness on things we do and how it affects us. When you take something from somewhere, we got to remember that there is going to be imbalance in another side from where we take. If you slog at late nights in office, you have to sacrifice in your personal life. On a contrary, if you don't work enough, you got to take home much less salary. It all depends on mindful choice we make.

We cannot get away from the system, the system is so fair. Fairness is the language. Even if the part of the system is unfair, the overall system tries to bring in the balance. Everything from recession to green house effect to necessity of a climate change pact is manifestation of systems (The time by which the system threatens the humankind, the mankind reacts with climate change pact. The system knows how to survive and if needed it will wipe off mankind. The question is whether we will survive?) When someone abuses the system, the system reacts but it takes a while for effects to erupt and this doesn't mean that the system is tolerant to abuses. It means that we are not used to sense little change in the behavior of the system. We are so insensitive to early symptoms. We realize only when we choke. The guys who believe in God say that as cosmic energy or Karma and the atheists say that as system or a gravitational force. Very few agree with both (because everything has a limit :-)).

But at the end - everything has some quota.

The system is equal opportunity environment.