Measuring Distraction

I knew I would write this post right after I scanned this piece of paper. And yet, what did I do? I opened an email which led me to open another link before I reminded myself that since I had scanned the format, I should write this post.

If your mobile phone and laptop suck up your time and leave you tired without any feeling of satisfaction at the end of the day, you might just want to do this exercise for a few days and measure your DISTRACTION QUOTIENT.

If you look at the sheet, you'll see 4 columns. You'll also see some symbols and words highlighted in green.

The first 2 columns are sort of 'purposeful'. Obviously, we use mobile phones and laptops for purposeful activities. So the first 2 columns give you the space to record what you consciously decide to do using these gadgets. They are marked with 'right tick' on top. You can fill these columns well in advance.

The 3rd and 4th columns are meant to record the instances of 'unintentional' or 'undetermined' use of these gadgets. The kind of thing I did (narrated right at the start of this post) before I started writing this post. You would fill these columns only after you've distracted yourself and done something which wasn't quite consciously determined in advance.

The ratio of the number of items in the first two and the number of items in the last two should give your DISTRACTION QUOTIENT. I hope you would know how to interpret that ratio :).

Facebook has us all, and grossly under-performs

How much can our eyes see in a given moment? How many moments do we have in any given day? How many moments do we spend on reading and going through the FB updates? On how many such moments we feel 'amazing'?

From how many friends (I've got some 850 odd friends) do you see updates on any given day that you check FB? And so, how many friends you would surely like to check updates from? Who are these friends? Given the number of friends, how adept you've become socially as a result of social media?  Apart from friends, how many groups are you a part of on FB?

I spend a considerable time on FB almost everyday. And yet, on reflection I feel no great on most such days. I itch to get updates from some people and I don't quite know if they've posted anything. Why? Simple, everyone's posting a lot of stuff and that lot of stuff is algorithmically curated and the algorithm is no good. If I have 850 in my friends list, and everyone's posting 4 updates on average, there you go. On any given day I have a total of 3400 updates to go through! It's become a super-market of updates!

Is there a way out? A way that can make browsing the FB timeline marginally better and yet significantly effective?

There must be a cap of, let's say, 5 updates for every user. Don't let the algorithm curate. Let all the updates appear in a sequence on the timeline. Let the user figure which updates are worth posting.

Someone will argue, another platform will emerge that will offer 50 updates for every user. Sure, can emerge. Will that be any good? Will that help you read and go through the updates in any better way?

Capping the quantities is what makes something worthwhile. Otherwise the space is wide open. And you aren't even an atomic organism when placed against that space.

Gandhiji and the tragedy of getting my clothes ironed

I thought about this some 5 days back.

In my ways of clothing myself, I thought I had reached a Gandhian simplicity. And on occasions I felt proud of it. Yes, thought of matching Gandhiji in matters of fashion can make anyone proud.

So I reached for my lush navy blue Mufti trousers, pulled them on and buttoned myself. And I let my palms caress my butts and feel the freshness of a ironed and washed pair of trousers.

Tragedy has epic proportions and minute ones too. I felt some burnt ends of the stitches that shaped my beloved trousers. For a little moment I felt the pinch of spending yet again, in spite of my simplified wardrobe, on a pair of blue trousers. Oh my Gandhiji!

Actually, Gandhiji surely had it better than I think. May be coz of the environment, or the lack of options available, or pure (intentional or inadvertent) wisdom.

So what if I wear only two colors - white and blue. So what if my trousers are always blue and my shirts always white. My iron-man has a world of options to contend with. My colors and others' colors. The fabric of my clothes and the fabrics of others' clothes. The content of poly-material in my clothes and the content of poly-material in others' clothes. The styling of my trousers and styling of other people's trousers.

And he has to iron them all in a given time to make sure he gets enough to sleep peacefully somehow. He has to show courage and strength to iron them all and feel music in life.

Let's say I want to feel at ease and peace, and also master my skill in the 100 square feet of space I occupy. I would stick to my drum-set. This man sticks to his coals and bicep-exercising mechanical iron. He masters it. He burns whatever comes in the way. He folds them nice and tight. Thinks he has mastered it all. All day long. And sleeps.

I might have to pay a visit to the mall yet again. Perhaps, before that think whether Gandhiji got his khadi ironed or not.

Pics courtesy: laudafinem.com and paulniederer.com

Automobile is a convenient lie and traffic is exactly what it was meant to be

From wikipedia:

The word automobile comes, via the French automobile from the Ancient Greek word αὐτός (autós, "self") and the Latin mobilis ("movable"); meaning a vehicle that moves itself.

We are still struggling with artificial intelligence. Do you really believe a vehicle moves itself? Then what exactly do you do sitting in that vehicle?

Let's say you don't move the vehicle. Do you still believe that the vehicle is moving itself?

Read more from wikipedia:

The loanword was first adopted in English by The New York Times in 1899.

If the belief of/in the word 'automobile' has resulted in losses to you (I can't think of a loss that's well-articulated and measured though), time to sue the NYT :).

Wikipedia has more on the origins of the word 'car':

The alternative name car is believed to originate from the Latin word carrus or carrum ("wheeled vehicle"), or the Middle English word carre ("cart") (from Old North French), in turn these are said to have originated from the Gaulish word karros (a Gallic Chariot).

Now the concept of wheeled vehicle sounds like the true description, isn't it?

And we are also unnecessarily bothered by 'traffic'. It's meant to be just what it is. Flow but slow. Again from wikipedia:

Traffic in English is taken from the Arabic word taraffaqa, which means to walk along slowly together.

And yet we keep cursing. May be they never told us about company in traffic. We've got some nasty teachers :).

Disturbing pic of my early morning bedroom and how the Japanese got it right

The funniness of what we call as 'bedroom', in the modern context, has dawned upon me. And quite conclusively.

In the second line of the wikipedia page on 'bedroom', you find this:

To be considered a bedroom the room needs to have a bed.

Actually, this line makes it feel like 'bed' is just one of the objects in the bedroom. Quite so. But mathematics isn't just about numbers. It's also about space. The modern bedroom is typically filled with the bed, in a manner that no other substantial object can be placed or accommodated in the bedroom. At least, for the majority of people who've been able to afford a bedroom.

And that no other substantial object can be placed in the bedroom, means other than resting or sleeping or making love (variants of the same posture I would say), no substantial activity can take place.

Given that a mighty number of us find ourselves doing work which doesn't quite make us exert ourselves, at least physically, in any great manner, this bedroom turns out to be a great roadblock on the way to good health. Let me elaborate.

We have risen substantially in population. Per capita space available is very limited. That's the reason we find such congestion on the roads, in the malls, in the gyms et al. And when I mention gym, I can easily say that reaching the gym is also an inconvenience in general, in a world which has made contraptions for convenience of all kinds even for the smallest of things we do.

After entering the gym, the nightmare doesn't end. Certain gadgets or equipment might have queues for use.

That makes whatever per capita space available to us a really precious thing. Space that is undividedly available for personal use, no matter the time. And that is occupied by the bed.

First you shape the building, then the building shapes you.

So you start shaping your undivided personal space with a good bed in the little space you have for yourself. Now is the bed's turn to shape you. And shapes you, it does. Pretty well.

Am I saying bed isn't needed?

Nope! Given the space an individual has to himself and the work he does in the modern context, I am saying naming the space blindly as 'bedroom' has entailed a massive cost on our well-being. We've taken it for granted that such a space can be nothing but a 'bedroom'. And the thing that we end up doing is installing a bed that doesn't leave much space for very very important things. And our architects and interior designers perpetuate the crime.

Let me go back a bit. When the convenient technologies weren't available and when majority of the people exerted themselves physically and really hard during the day, they perhaps found it very very comforting to come back home, do nothing more than cooking and eating, and simply go to bed. Having a ready mattress would be the perfect luxury. Since the space outside the house exercised majority of the people, inside the house dedicating space to sleeping was just a great complement. But now, no longer so.

In fact, there's very little space outside for healthy exertion. And, even inside, there's mostly the bed.

If we really want to make the space available count and if we really want a healthy body, here are a couple of things.

Futon. We all have seen this thing. From wikipedia:

A futon is traditional Japanese bedding consisting of padded mattresses and quilts pliable enough to be folded and stored away during the day, allowing the room to serve for purposes other than as a bedroom.

Perfect!

There's more. Wall-bed. Also called Murphy bed. Wikipedia narrates the legend:

According to legend, he (William Lawrence Murphy) was wooing an opera singer, but living in a one-room apartment in San Francisco, and the moral code of the time frowned upon a woman entering a man's bedroom. Murphy's invention converted his bedroom into a parlor, enabling him to entertain.

Now that surely takes care of a man's health, no!

Multi-tasking, some clarification

Image source: wikipedia

A lot of us who've tried being superheroic, and tried doing things in a way that we become worthy of this appellation called 'multi-tasker', would relate to what I have found out.

For example, ever tried talking on the mobile phone or answering someone's call while brushing your teeth full of froth. How does it feel, this attempt to multi-task?

But let's say your mouth is full of froth and foam, and for a couple of minutes you ignore the call or the mobile phone ring. And once you are done with rinsing your mouth, you get to answering the call or talking on your mobile phone. How does that go?

To understand multi-tasking in the truest sense, determine whether the two/more tasks are meant to happen at the same point in time or in a sequence over a little stretch of time.

My anxious attempts at doing it the first way have put me in such inelegant spots and situations that I don't want to share them here. Currently, I am occupied with the second kind. And that is proving very very tiring.

Two more points.

Those who have developed this ability to multi-task over a stretch of time, I reckon, have mastered a very crucial skill.

Actually, a better term than multi-tasking is juggling. Conceptually and sonically, both.

Where should a big hospital be run from?

Hospital is a contingency business. I mean, the consumer of a hospital is always in trouble. And 'what's the need' is a forgone question, though of course needs careful consideration.

How do we behave when in immediate trouble, emergency or dire need?

Unfortunately, a lot of hospitals took a leaf from the general assembly line management system and got it all wrong. (When I say that, I am aware of certain hospital which used assembly line management to great effect.) Yes, the ones who got it wrong are the ones who made secluded chambers for managers responsible to take care of the operations. They made nodes which would be far from where the consumer(patient) would typically rush in. They made the team wait at these nodes where the consumer(patient) would typically find it difficult to reach.

Unlike a grand monumental atrium-like central empty space available at different places to make the visitor feel good, a hospital has to have the pilot and his entire team right where the consumer first walks in. Yes, right at the first touch-point. Empty spaces help the movement but slowly kill the guy in pain.

Egos would not let the above happen. Perhaps then, the most responsible person who's supposedly called the COO and his entire team meant to deliver care, has to be right where this patient walks in. Mind you, not just that one person. His entire care-team.

And then see if a hospital is any less enjoyable and any more difficult to manage than other places.

Why 'staying fit' doesn't make sense?

Yes, there was a time when without moving the body and toiling it was difficult to earn one's bread. And most time was consumed by such moving and toiling. This moving, it seemed, made one hungry and this moving consumed all the energy one got from eating the food one earned by moving. The human will, it seemed, was one with the basic human need. Fitness (or perhaps if I can put it better, non-obese body) was a default condition.

But that's no longer the case. Food is available fairly conveniently. Moving the body and toiling for food doesn't apply to majority of human beings. Enduring the inconvenience of moving one's body to earn for food sounds preposterous for so many of us. Unfit bodies, especially the obese kinds, resulting out of minimal movement is common.

So we have a special problem. For a lot of us, the will (to move the body, for that's what is needed to exercise one's body and keep fit) has divorced from the basic need of obtaining food by moving and toiling. If I can say, moving one's body has lost the deep essential meaning it had once upon a time.

A Bedroom Story

That innocuous looking expression, bedroom, sometimes wreaks havoc in my evolving way of daily working.

Bed and room. Room is space. Bed is the object that occupies that space. I have a problem with occupation of space.

If space is the currency, then the best returns are obtained when it facilitates a range of movements. Putting a bed permanently in that space means now you can move through the space only in certain ways. To the extent of limitation in movements, returns diminish.

When I observe the birds make nests, I realize that they do so, not for their living, but for making sure that their young ones survive a certain amount of time after birth. After that phase, the nest might get destroyed. But birds fly and survive nonetheless.

It isn't a stretch of imagination to understand that houses must have been just a way of defense at one point. We have read about that some time in our life.

To raise a question like where do we sleep if we don't have bed, is to confuse the action of sleeping with the object, (a permanently space-occupying) bed. And that is a mighty confusion.

We will indulge in sleeping regardless of the fact there's a bed or not. When the per capita space is so limited anyway, and when we find ourselves in this weird state of working out like mannequins behind glass-windows of a showroom-like gym, I think it's time rethink the permanence of occupation of space by this thing called bed.

If bed were equal to sleeping, everyone should fall asleep as soon as one lies on the bed, no?

That last rhetorical question leads me to this inference. I sense since bed mightily limits the range of movements you can do in a given space, a lot of us find it difficult to sleep, in spite of the best of beds available to us.

You'll sleep, rest, relax only when the body moves. Body will move only when there's enough space to indulge in movement of all kinds. And in the same breath, body stays fit only when it undergoes a range of movements day after day.

So while moving and sleeping are important for fitness, a permanently space occupying bed might actually be working against both the actions.

I love Kareena Kapoor!

Actually, I like this look.

No, actually I like this white dress.

Ummm, no, I like the style at the neck.

Or, do I like the way her hand rests on the side?

In fact, I like that lone ring. See, how beautifully it matches with her dress.

It looks to me, she's been made up. I like the make-up then.

Oh, they are the lips! Full and glossy!

No no no! I think I like this non-earrings look!

I think it isn't the make-up really. It's photoshop!

Forget the make-up I think I am not able to make up my mind.

Whatever words I choose, I can convince you and yet not be able to tell you exactly what it is. And therefore, perhaps after the initial convincing, leave you unconvinced about what I say.

If I am a ring collector, I'll talk about the ring. If I'm a heroine-obsessed movie buff, I'll talk about Kareena. If I'm a white color fanatic, I'll express my appreciation for the dress. If I'm a hair-style experimenter, I'll start appreciating that. Being a graphics designer, I'll appreciate the graphics guy who isn't visible out here.

Truth is, when a band plays, every note has to be played 'right', every instrument has to jam with the other, every guy has to use his senses to stay in tune.

This Kareena Kapoor pic looks great. And I call it 'Kareena Kapoor pic' coz we recognize her and she fills most of the frame. It could just be a 'white dress pic'. But if Kareena didn't have the body, that white dress wouldn't be noticeable. Or if this white dress weren't this stylishly created, I wouldn't have noticed Kareena Kapoor so intently this morning.

It never is one thing. It's always a composition. You gotta make things jam.

Vibrams, the marketing thinking and the invisible style

Just came back from a 5km run in the backwoods in my Vibrams FiveFingers.

A little girl going to school watched the shoes and followed my moving feet with a sleepy curiosity. A taxi-driver followed my feet for a few seconds. A watchman (whom I encountered for the first time) at a neighborhood building followed my feet for a few seconds too. Sometimes even dogs look at my feet with curiosity.

When at Hiranandani Garden in Mumbai, quite a few fellow runners/walkers on the track look on with inquisitive eyes.

Over more than 2 years now, I've rarely encountered another person in my vicinity wearing Vibrams.

None of the people who've talked to me about Vibrams have ever admitted that they love the style. Strangely, it doesn't bother me. My feet feel so right, so very natural, so free.

That's the point. I am sure Vibrams must have been written to or informed by a mighty number of shoe-lovers about the 'ugliness' of the visual design. On the other hand, a mighty number of Vibrams wearers must have shared how amazing they feel on wearing the shoes.

Surely, exclusivity - even that of the weird or the incomprehensible which borders ugliness - is a style statement. But unless there's something substantial, such style statements are difficult to sustain.

In the case of Vibrams, the movement the shoes facilitate and the feeling arising out of that movement in the wearer, far surpass the awkwardness of visual style. In fact, if you video-record the movements/the action of someone wearing Vibrams, you might not find anything extraordinary either. And this someone won't stop wearing Vibrams.

Toyota's Express Maintenance is great strategy

I am not a great believer of the carzy ecosystem. But having bought and owned and maintained a car, this initiative makes perfect sense. In fact, more than perfect sense.

It's the kind of strategic move that was open to all the car brands of the country. But again it takes guts and simple observation of the customers' travails at the service stations to come up with such a move. Coming from a brand that promises Quality Revolution, it looks the right thing. Am sure this must have taken quite a bit of preparation to be able to promise such a thing.

Among those bullet points, look at the last one. Watch your car being serviced. And 60 Minutes Comprehensive Service.

I don't quite like the Toyota's styling department but if I were to buy another car today, this initiative would be enough to switch my mind to a Toyota.

The ad-driven revenue model for content sites

I have no problems with them from this moment. And here are some points.

I understand that advertisements offer a way for content-driven sites to survive and earn. So far it's innocuous.

I used to get disturbed whenever I clicked an ad flashing right beside the article I would be reading, or a promo-link embedded within a piece of text. Imagine rushing out of a meeting that felt like worthy of your time and never returning to the room again. What's the purpose of that publisher who published the text that resides beside the tempting ad?

The problem gets yet more compounded when the writer talks about the nuisance of using cars on the congested Indian roads and there's an ad promoting a long sedan right beside that post. What does a reader believe? What does a reader believe about what the publisher believes in? Is the aim of such publishing to make the reader understand the virtues of believing paradoxes? And does the reader visit such sites to learn the skill of paradox assimilation?

Motorcycle ads on motorcycle blogs seem a great match. Yesterday I visited this blog that I often visit. The post I was reading was cautiously critical of the move of launching Mahindra Centuro. Right beside I noticed an ad promoting that very motorcycle. No problem so far but if I had left the post midway by clicking the ad, guess it would be an incomplete sort of experience. I read the post and then checked out the motorcycle by clicking the ad. Felt appropriate.

And it isn't a stretch of imagination to apply these occurrences to other media like TV or Radio or newspaper/magazines et al. And I have no doubts that the damage to people's understanding of the world is unprecedented even though seemingly unmeasurable.

One thing I can say for such content-driven sites, where conflicts between advertising and their messages are rampant and blatant, is the publishers aren't doing enough to enhance a reader's understanding in spite of the revenues they earn because of the readers visiting their sites. I think that's such a waste of the opportunity that the readers have given them.

Smart phony and dizzy

I feel dizzy when I read on smart phones for slightly more than 2 minutes.

I felt that with the earlier handset too. Feel more with this handset, I sense. The inference that smart phones have become smarter at causing dizziness wouldn't be right though :).

I think quite a few people feel this. A few of my friends definitely do.

If it turns out a mighty serious issue in the times to come, I won't be surprised.

The problem is one of orientation.

Phones of course were largely meant for talking. Since we hear and talk through one-block-piece instrument, the design had to straddle the distance between ear and mouth and so it is the way it is. Vertically oriented.

But we started consuming a hell lot of videos and reading matter and games, all of which require our eyes to look at the screen that's perfect for a squirrel's eyes not ours. Why? Eyes are horizontally oriented.

But then the screens can be oriented horizontally for data consumption. And yet horizontally oriented screens are also very small to fit the eye-span without straining.

There could be other reasons too which strain the eyes (in turn leading to headaches and such issues) that interact with data on screens.

My reading is there will be a significant decline in the usage of smartphones (for data) in their current forms.

Even as I make the above statement I am aware that the penetration of smart phones is still in single digits, at least in India. Unless there's a really really smart solution to this orientation problem, laptops and less smarter mobile phones don't have much to worry.

How to become alert?

Use Google Alerts.

In fact, that question in the subject line is just so superficial.

The thing is we all want to keep abreast of stuff happening in our domains of work or interest. Isn't it? We all know that expertise doesn't build just on the day we wish to build one. We don't gain depth the day we want to dig a well.

Yes, alerts once set, this little tool offered by Google keeps sending you stuff that you are really interested in. In your inbox.

It kind of counters the distractive forces (including spam filling our inbox) that the web unleashes upon us.

Return on Formal Education (RFE)

Sharing some stats from this article I read two days back:

• India now produces more engineers and MBAs than the US and China combined. Our annual output of 15 lakh engineers and 3 lakh MBAs is way ahead of the US (1 lakh engineers and 1.25 lakh MBAs) and China (11 lakh engineers and 75,000 MBAs).
• MBAuniverse.com estimates that outside the top 20 MBA colleges only 24% of students are employable.
• Assocham believes that campus placement (in the context of engineering) outside the top 20 colleges is 10%.

The article also has some suggestions which is where it gets really funny. By funny, I mean the quality of suggestions, not really the stats. Stats aren't surprising at all. Have a look:

• They must get 3-5 years of work experience after their engineering or college degree before getting an MBA.
• If most students are not getting campus placements we need to fix our dysfunctional employment exchanges that only gave 3 lakh jobs last year to the 4 crore kids registered. We need to allow foreign universities in.
• We need to raise our 3 lakh formal apprenticeships — Germany has 40 lakh, Japan 1 crore and China has 1.5 crore.
• Most importantly, India must explode job creation because nothing changes a student's life more than their first formal, non-farm job. 

A critique of the article:
While every action or piece of execution benefits from good measurement systems and the stats emerging out of these measurement systems, the recommendations offered in this article reek of naivete at best. Even offering only the stats would've done better justice to the gravity of the situation.

Find the article here. 

Web-driven Learning Checklist for the Autodidact

When I want to learn/learn about something, I typically find myself referring to these, not necessarily in the same order:

1. www.Dictionary.com - Recently I found myself exploring the subject of 'friction' and I came across the word 'Tribology'. Unaware of the precise meaning, it helped to check dictionary dot com before trying to explore the subject further.
2. www.Amazon.com - Have this peculiar habit of checking books on the subject before googling it or checking it on Wikipedia.
3. Kindle ebook samples - If one has a smartphone and has downloaded the Kindle app, it proves to be an amazing resources for sampling the subject in fairly good detail without committing monetary resources.
4. www.Wikipedia.com - It's a no-brainer. You want a good view at almost work or subject under the sun, you might find this a very helpful resource almost every single time. Though, certain technical areas which we are not exposed to at all might be difficult to follow on occasions.
5. www.Google.com - Search = Google. I don't need to say much. But so often I refer to it after I've checked the above 4 resources.
6. Google Images - Typically, when I am researching a physical object, firstly I like to see its different avatars, its forms, shapes and so on. Going through the images is like enabling instant awareness and invoking associations.
7. www.Youtube.com - Video always convinces. Captures attention easily and facilitates concentration sometimes through entertaining and moving presentation of concepts.
8. Twitter handles and FB pages dedicated to the term/the subject are good reminders. But they don't yet seem to aid us in learning like the other resources do.

SDC Bank?

Oh the brightness captured my attention amidst the drabness of the architecture you see in the picture and the dullness of the traffic of the traffic I found myself in.

SDC Bank. Full form, The Sahebrao Deshmukh Cooperative Bank Ltd. Given the transformation that every little bank has undergone, I wasn't quite surprised to find this. However, it looks to me that this fancy abbreviation was a result to put itself in the league of the big abbreviatedly branded banks of the country.

I wonder if this peculiarly traditional bank name has a history, a story. If it really does, it has just added one more layer between itself and the people's understanding. Perhaps there's another way for such brands to tell  us their stories and appeal to a certain audience.

May be, its customers will now feel a little better when others ask them, "So which bank you have your account in?" And they say, "SDC Bank!" Wow! Was that the thinking for this change?

Brightness helps get attention. Abbreviation adds to the confusion though.

Tangentially Applied Principles of Economics

The law of diminishing marginal returns applies to India's 24x7 reproductive machinery too. 

I will fail to list a great source which corroborates this claim but if our feelings are any measure of the phenomenon, then we've been witnessing negative returns for decades and decades together.

Let's say there's a subject called Tangentially Applied Principles of Economics (let me give a sexy sounding glamorous abbreviation too: TAPE. If this isn't sexy, please contribute :{). If our entire education system gets dedicated somehow, directly or indirectly, to teach just this one subject and make ourselves understand just this one single point and act upon it, it would take care of a hell lot of troubles.

"You have to do this."

Or, "This is the task ahead of us."

The first one's a command emerging out of one's superiority complex. It might not evoke a response as much as it demands a report. Therefore, good big hierarchical set ups so often have reporting as a behavior, instead of responding, among their employees.

My sense is, reporting corrodes, responding creates.