Serendipity and Learning

Once upon a time, i was tasked with running a newsletter and this was being run by someone else - but somehow the issues never came out. I said, sure and took over the newsletter team. Called for a few meetings, but hardly anybody turned up. And then I asked the one or two people who regularly turned up and then it struck me... I met all the "committee members" 1 on 1 and asked them are they here because of the love of writing or because their managers sent them. Most of them had no love of writing - they were there because someone asked them to be on the committee. I then gave them a choice - no repercussions, you can leave this committee.  Most did. Two stayed back. And we managed to bring out a couple of issues. After that we sent an mail - Would you like to join this newsletter team? With a few fun lines thrown in. In a week we got another 5 people who were there because they liked writing. And then the newsletter never missed an issue! A very similar experience to the ti...

Scott Galloways point that " Follow your passion" is bad advice somewhat resonated with me and I set thinking about it. I agree with him broadly. It took me a long time to realise what is my passion. And I realised that my passion is a stack - and has a couple of things at the core.  For one, I had to do something that was difficult for me - speaking in public in front of people and training them. It was through a fairly complex route that I reached here. This was neither natural not did I have a flair for it - it was pure effort and practice of getting better at it. It was also a derivative of something else - since I am not a natural speaker nor an extrovert.  The starting point was the design element of the training which I enjoy the most.  I remember from school times - I would read Brand Equity - the Economic Times supplement on advertising. And the creative side of advertising attracted me. But marketing was not something I was sure I enjoyed, so that fell by the w...

Many years ago (and I realized that this movie was a 1991 release) in a Malayalam movie (a classic, remade in multiple languages) - Kilukkam - the lead actor Mohanlal - plays a tourist guide. And a supporting actor plays an authorized guide. In most tourist destinations, even today, there are 'authorized' guides who charge you 'fees' fixed by the 'authority' and do some good 'guiding' if you are lucky. And there are also 'unauthorized' guides who will charge you 'less' and 'guide' you as well. My own experience with both kinds of guides has been iffy. The authorized guide has not brought anything that great to the table. And my experience with unauthorized guides has been equally non descript. But in the movie, the authorized guide is a drunk who cares little about the destinations or the tourists and is only looking to make a fast buck. The unauthorized guide on the other hand, predictably, is the good guy. But as far as...

In the space of the last few months, I have met two 'nutrionists' (spellcheck has put a red squiggly under this for some reason). And my main purpose was to know what diet changes I can make in order to achieve my health goals. Now, a caveat. Most people take pride in their 'interior decoration' skills or 'aesthetic' 'taste' or prize their own 'skills' or 'talent' in something or the other. For me diet and nutrition happens to be one of those things. I read practically everything on 'diet' and it is wont be an understatement to say that I am upto speed into the most of the current 'theories' of nutrition. Like for example: have small meals through the day. Avoid junk food. Have more fibre in your food. Dinner atleast 2 hours before bedtime. Among other things... And this is the basic stuff. At an intermediate level, I am aware of the benefits of flax seed oil, coconut oil (yes, those old theories claiming it to be a...

As I read "The Most Powerful Idea in the World" by William Rosen, I had a bunch of thoughts (as you may have guessed, this is the 3rd post after reading the book). The first is of course that science as we learn in schools and colleges is mostly a linear narrative. Somebody worked on something, they invented it. Of course, narratives are not as simple as that - there are problems, opportunities, passions, networks, geniuses, unsung assistants and unglorified tries along the way, until it all falls in place. The fact that we miss the story behind the invention or the discovery is actually an exponential degree of enthusiasm lost. In reading a linear narrative, any reader is hardly ever going to be inspired. Perhaps knowing the story and the person behind the science or the invention or the discovery is as useful as learning the fact of the matter.  Perhaps the history of technologies needs to be an important course in any engineering or science syllabus. And perhaps it i...

When I was in school - about 10 years old - I used to go to shloka classes to learn the Rudram and the Chamakam among other things. OK. That's a lie. My father used to send me to those classes and I used to go because I had no choice. Here is where I learnt, by experience, that you can take the horse to the water, but cannot make it drink. The prime reason I did not like those classes was because they clashed with those stupid DD soaps of those times. Come of think of it, those miserable soaps. Luckily my father won - and thankfully I realized it about 15 years later. As you might have guessed, I went to those classes, but did not learn. For 5 long years, I went and did not learn. These classes were taught in the traditional gurukul system - with the guru leading and the students repeating it twice. Pure auditory learning. No books given or encouraged - books were allowed at your own risk. Books make you focus more on the text and less on the diction and comprehension the gu...