In Appreciation of Appreciation

A long time back, in class 7, we were standing in line to go inside class.  Unexpectedly, one of my english teachers called me aside, and gave me a hard-covered red diary with a design of small flowers on the cover.  She was going to be leaving soon: she was one among many teachers of mine who was a volunteer: they came for terms of two years to both my high school, and later, my college, to teach, and went back after their term was over.

The diary was blank, and on the first page, she had written that it was a gift to someone, who she hoped, would be able to fill those pages with wonderful poems someday.  She had written more, but that is perhaps the most important line for me, and the feeling that came with it of course.

I got more wonderful gifts from teachers and friends along the way.  The most wonderful thing about them was not the material that came as the actual gift, so much as the appreciation that came along with it.  I’ve had wonderful gifts that have been no larger than a slip of paper, which made not just me, but even other members of my family very happy.  Even just praise, sincerely given, with heartfelt words, can make a large difference in your life: one such incident still makes me strive to make myself better than what I am often when I remember it.

And then again, more expensive gifts, while they may have made me happy, might not last so long as the gifts of true appreciation and encouragement.

I’m sure all of us have received such gifts in one form or another at different times in our lives.  The only regret that I might have about the gift of appreciation, is that I might not have been able to give as many as I have received, sometimes even when I have thought I should.  Expressing yourself is really something that requires a lot of courage if you are not used to it!

I think appreciation from others sometimes shows you aspects of yourself that you might not even have noticed.  Sincere appreciation, in contrast to flattery, helps you to see those aspects, and to take what you already have, and develop it to its full potential.

So from my side, heres to appreciation, and to more opportunities to both give and receive sincere  appreciation in the future!

To memorize or not to um…. what was I saying?

I used to look at memorization as if it was something that was not fit for people really interested in learning.

That was in the past.  Nowadays, I look at it in a different light.

Long ago, I preferred to derive formulae for mathematics rather than try to remember them, even in exams.  I believed that what was important was understanding the concepts, and being able to do things yourself.  I still believe this though.

But then, I’ve also begun seeing things from another angle: the fact that a man with the right tools can achieve more results than a man without those tools, though the one without tools may be a very good worker.  What does that have to do with memorization?

Its pretty obvious that memorization serves as a tool for various purposes.  Students cramming their way through exams is one purpose it serves quite well.  However, providing a framework of readily accessible facts in your mind when you need them is another very important use it has.  Think of two people: with the same level of understanding of a subject.  One understands all the concepts, but he needs to refer to his books, the internet, or whatever he has at his disposal to remember hard facts.  The other knows all of the facts in his mind.

Let me take an aside from the scenario above for a while, and go to the world of Buddhist monks in Tibet, where I read once (in a book called The Third Eye by T. Lobsang Rampa) that the monks were supposed to memorize numerous thick volumes of books, and were able to remember anything in any of the pages using a memory system.  “The feat might be incredible, but what is the point?”, you might ask .  Anyways, that was one of the questions that had come to my mind.

I am not sure.  One thing though, is that they have two advantages: i. they can refer to, and mix and merge any number of concepts in the books at will, and they have a reference that is always at their disposal (thus, helping them gain a deeper understanding in the long run); ii. the discipline that it took to memorize those volumes forced them to concentrate, and I believe that, the density of the time you put in is much more important than just the raw length of time you put in. By density, I mean the amount of concentration you put in.

Jumping back to the first scenario:  the second person has the facts he needs in his head all the time, which means that he can refer to these facts anytime– something I seem to frequently do (since it seems my unconscious mind keeps working on problems even when I am doing something else– something I have noticed frequently when I try to solve brain-teasers and other problems).  In other words, he has a framework in his mind, which he can customize as he wishes to.  That is a very valuable tool for learning.

The second advantage he has is in self confidence.  Both people might be experts, but the one who can easily answer any questions fired at him instead of having to refer to notes gives the ‘feel of an expert’ to a random observer.  And being able to convince random people that you are an expert is part of the art of selling yourself, something that is quite important in competitive times.

As a final observation that I found quite interesting:  after you work for years in a field, you find you know certain things by heart, i.e. you have the knowledge/skills at your fingertips.  If you are a person used to memorizing+practicing things well in the beginning itself, you thus gain significant comparable expertise much sooner.

The subject of course, deserves much more detail than what I have covered above (my customary apology– this is a blog, not an essay ).  However, the aspects I mentioned above are quite important (at least to me), and are part of the reason of why I am beginning to find a newfound respect for memorization.

‘Grown Up’

I begin this post with a recommendation for those of you who have not read The Little Prince to do so at least once in their life.  It is a very beautiful book, very short, and though it is a children’s book, I am sure it will call out to the child in every adult who reads it!  You can read it online from the link above, or here as well: the link of my preference.

I often wonder what ‘being grown up’ is exactly about.  A more apt statement would be that I wonder if everyone has the same perspective of ‘growing up’ as I do… to explain my perspective, many (please note: I do not say ‘all’) ‘grown ups’ do seem like the ‘grown ups’ the Little Prince meets in his journeys in the book.  Not the whole person of course, but some aspect or the other.  I am sure I resemble quite a few of the characters there too .

Today, something struck me as a possible explanation of the phenomenon of ‘growing up’ (in the sense of the book).  I’ll explain it below:

As a child, we all have our own fears, our own inadequacies, as well as our own positive points.  As we grow up, we need to cope with things in life.  The ideal solution would be to face each fear, and to get rid of it once and for all.  That is the concept of ‘fighting one’s demons’ that I understood in a movie on Bruce Lee’s life… something his father was talking to him about.

But then, to fight demons requires strength, and often, help (in the sense of help from friends, family, or someone with a lot of perception, to cite a few possibilities).  Not all of us are lucky enough to get even one of the two many times.  However, time (and life) moves on at its own pace, waiting for nobody.  You grow older, and before you know it, you have more and more responsibilities.  You still shoulder your fears, your ‘demons’ though.  What do you do?

If you cannot openly face them, you build up defense mechanisms to avoid those fears.

Children may not need, and hence, understand these defense mechanisms.  Even we ourselves may be unaware of our own mechanisms, and even more unaware of those of others.  Hence, we may not understand that the way Mr. X or Mrs. Y reacts so strangely to certain (all?) things is not because because they are bad people deep inside, but because they are just naturally reacting defensively against their fears– demons deep inside their minds, lurking around and thriving in the dark corners of their minds.

Is that what a lot of ‘grown ups’ are like?  I know a few in my life, whose reactions really used to irk me.  Later, I could see their defense mechanisms and their actual fears (to some extent) as I got to know them more.

Some act all bossy towards kids (and other people), and behave as if they know it all.  However, if they had to go through their childhood once again, through the same situations that are perhaps packed away in some dark corner of their mind, forgotten, but not let go of, how would they fare the second time on?  How many demons have they fought off forever in their life?

Of course, it sounds so nice to be able to get over all your fears, to live life without pretenses or complexes.  However, its a short life we have, and not all of us find the resources we need to fight all of our battles.  The people who gather around us, the responsibilities that pile up on our shoulders, these need our time, as much as our inner battles do.  Which do we give priority to?

After all, whether we win our inner battles or not, we are still, in essence, the very people we have always been, the same people that only we might know deep down inside, and like so much.  We live our lives the best we can, and hope to make a difference (or perhaps not), leaving behind memories that hopefully, at least a few will cherish for a long time, doing our best to be ‘grown up’ with the time and resources that we have at hand.

Personally, as a note, I would like to add that I think we have as many resources as we would like to have, and both winning the battle and living our life at the same time is possible.  However, that is just an opinion, nothing that I have thought very deeply about… somewhat like this posting in this regard (which perhaps received a bit more thought that the last statement ).

My two cents on what could be done… (yeah, dream on…)

I read this news article yesterday, and found myself agreeing– it sounded like a good idea to me!  I also read this article today.  I am actually really excited about the first (not excited as in ‘jumping up and down’, but excited as in … ‘wow.. thats kind of along the lines I think too!’), and would point out certain things about the second as ‘not completely true’.  Here is a 2-minute, ‘my two cents’ analysis– I seriously believe that this might be actually helpful though.. though I am sure that more appropriate minds than mine are working on the problem.

My Two Cents

1. We do not lack skilled manpower, even within the country.   All of the manpower might not be ‘as skilled’, but there is definitely a lot of ‘top talent’ still within the country.
2. A pool of relatively less experienced (but quite skilled) manpower is also present in the country, currently ‘looking for jobs’.  They graduate every year from various institutions.  They believe in fairness, competition, benefits, recognition, skill improvement, global marketability etc.
3. My experience in most of my jobs (quite a few!) has been: I have had to learn more on the job than apply what I learned in my undergraduate studies.  I believe this principle applies in many situations, and is the reason that companies train employees.  Train the new graduates– give them the freedom to go elsewhere if they want, but try your best to interest them and make them genuinely want to stay with you.  My belief is that when you are starting a career, experience, contact building, learning skills and techniques, etc are much more important than pay (which is definitely still important). This helps you to ‘sell’ yourself anywhere you want in the future.  If old employees leave, train new ones — try to keep old ones as long as you can, but let them go to ‘greener pastures’ if they can.  Pay them competitively, I would say slightly above the average ‘private company’ market rate, but quite below the ‘NGO market rate’.  However, train them well and treat them well.
4. Integrate willing, but less skilled manpower into the team for work involving more quantity and less skill.  Train them on the job too– same principle applies.  Give everyone the possibility of upward mobility.
5. Build a team culture.
6. Plan a lot of projects.  Don’t do it yourself.  Encourage private parties to do it.  That is where the government fails miserably now, and one of the most important aspects it should work on: completely root out the corruption in the process.  Quotes for government projects is a near-mafia style business in the current context according to what my friends tell me.  Trust me– the people who give you much lower rates and better service are elsewhere, and present in large quantities– just if you are willing to forego the personal benefits of engaging the current players. Encourage and help skilled parties to join in the game.  Create as many projects as you can.  Consult experts on ways to make the structure sustainable agains corruption in the future as well– rules are made to be broken– no matter what the system is, and people always find ways to corrupt systems– corruption is inherent in minds, not systems… protect against that– by understanding, not rigidity.
7. Get ‘skilled’ manpower to willingly create excellent proposals, and get aid for them if necessary, or fund them by yourself if you can.  By ‘skilled’, I think highly paid consultants might be much less appropriate than people who might be willing to do good work for much less.  Quality is important, but optimization for the best price-payoff ratio is the best strategy.
8. Get the projects rolling
9. Involve more people, improve the infrastructure, improve the pay, etc etc (i.e. sharpen the saw.. in the words of Stephen Covey, in a slightly different context!).

Thats all folks

Lack of time?

Or is it just lack of concentration?

I’ve found that working on concentration helps me manage time a bit better nowadays.  Turns out that the longer my attention span is — the faster I get things done, i.e. a span of 15 minutes before letting my mind wander is much better than letting other thoughts creep in every 2-3 minutes.

A lot of this is because of context switch overhead in my case– I need to gather my thoughts again, which takes up time, and when I am facing difficult things, it is easier to phase out temporarily again, in contrast to sitting it through for longer blocks, no matter how difficult the problem is.

Just phased out long enough… so I wrote this post!  Have to concentrate, have to concentrate, have to concentrate…….

The advantage of deadline driven work

There are things that seem such a hassle at times.. things that we just need to get over, and to forget.  Things like deadlines, exams, etc. What is the good thing about them, besides forcing us to go through material at least once?

One advantage I see is– it teaches us to get things done.  Getting things done is much harder than visualizing things being done… one of the major differences being the timespan, and some others being the effort involved, the frustrations in the midst of things, the interleaving with other real-life issues.  Despite all these, we need to get things done.

It helps make the perfectionist inside us see the practical side of things.  So many times, I have to compromise the way I would like to do things because I need to meet deadlines.  I do not really like it, but then, it did teach me that the Pareto principle is perhaps much truer than what I had expected, as far as 20% effort and 80% results go.

Just a short two-cents rant in the middle of “doing things”!

Overwhelmed?

Well, I am sometimes! I remembered this thing that our elementary school teachers taught us a long time ago, and smiled to myself.. it seemed to be such a nice thing to tell myself now:

“What matters is whether you try your best or not, not whether you succeed or not”

or something along those lines . Success does have its good points.. but its much easier to feel good about myself after realizing that I am trying my best despite the fact that circumstances do get a bit overwhelming at times!

P.S. My aim is still to succeed at whatever I am trying, but I am also trying to be aware of the fact that sometimes, when things do not work the way I want them to… or are very difficult, I am still trying my best!

Why constructive criticism is important

A long time back, when I was in high school, I heard something that made me wonder why school management was doing something so strange… what on earth they could be thinking.  I think it was sometime around class 8 or 9.. not sure though.

It starts kind of like this:  if a teacher saw you running in the hallway, they were not supposed to say “Don’t run!” but instead, they were supposed to say “Walk Slowly!”.

What was the big difference?  Why make it a point to ask teachers to say “Walk Slowly!” instead of “Don’t run!”?  This is just an example, they were supposed to make positive statements about other things too.

Much later, I came to this realization myself, and then remembered that that must have been what the school administration had intended… or come to believe when they had asked the teachers to make positive statements.  I’m not sure whether it came out of my experience teaching people (to use OpenOffice, etc), or from dealing with my own difficulties, but I slowly came to realize that when you make a positive statement, you give yourself an action plan.  When you make a negative statement (i.e. don’t, should’t, etc), you just cancel the existing plan, you don’t put a new one in its stead.

What difference does this make?  Sometimes, when someone is under stress, the simplest of such suggestions can make them process information much more easily.  Sometimes, the level you see things from and the level they do might be different.

For example, in chess, if I told you — don’t bring your queen out early, or don’t move the pawns in front of the rook in the beginning, you would understand my statement, but you would not know why.. and you would be left with the question — What should I do then?  However, if I told you…. focus on developing your pieces and capturing the center, you would focus more on those aspects, and would also learn more about the game, possibly coming to the conclusion that it was not good to move the rook pawn early on your own.

I could have come up with a better example… one that you could relate to more, but the chess one struck me first, and I am sticking with it for now.  Just my two cents.. constructive criticism is important and helpful, and when you are criticising someone, try to ask yourself… “I am telling them not to do this, but if I were them, what would I do myself instead of this?”  Think if that would be feasible in their situation.  Let them know what you think of the alternative as well.. then you are offering them the value of a slightly different perception.. playing lightly with a well-known metaphor… aren’t we just like blind men who feel different parts of the elephant?  Diffferent perspectives always help!

If they expect you to, you will!

Just wanted to comment on how I’ve been feeling after taking several classes this semester.  So many things that are so challenging, but still, I am enjoying the semester, and I feel like I am learning.  Things that seemed so complex– when I am challenged to do them…. I do (and so do the others!).  When I come to think of it.. thats what happened a long long time ago, when a computer teacher challenged me to write an interactive video game because I used to spend so much time in the lab everyday programming (back when I was in I.Sc. first year, i.e. class 11).  I was scared, and procastinated for a week, but after that, I wrote my first game… and then things got more interesting.. I wrote a few more!

What you expect of people contributes to their self image, to their aspirations.  Always try to see the best in them, and try to bring out the best.  Not completely related with what I said above–above was about challenging people too, now, I am talking about encouraging people.  However, what I want to say (I will say it anyways) is that if you look at this closely enough, you can see that you can choose to see both the good and the bad aspects in people.  Try to focus on and bring out the good.. it helps both you and them.  Some people can see the good in themselves and drive themselves forward, some would be happy when they get a bit of help from you, and remember you for a long time for that positive outlook they got from you.  (I know its not always easy, but at least try.. when you can!)

Just my two cents.. let me know what you think!