Love the messed up life.

My life is messed up in more than 1 ways. Same must be the case with many of you too. But then when I was thinking about this mess, I realized that I love the mess.

By mess I mean, I have multiple things not going the way I want them to at both personal and professional levels.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t want this mess. I totally do, because I’ve learnt to live with this mess all my life. The mess is almost a part of me.

I never really had my shit figured out. Always jumping in the well without looking at how deep the water is and later trying to deal with it has always been my way of doing it. Do I recommend this to others? No, you should be rational in your decisions.

You should not create mess for yourself until you know how to deal with all of it. Not just deal with it, you should love the mess too. Failing 7/10 times isn’t something everyone can endure but that’s how my life is moving at the moment.

Oh that’s horrible! This is exactly what you just felt after reading that. But those 3/10 times that I succeed are 10x bigger than normal successes.

The rule is simple, “The bigger the mess you can endure, the bigger results you will reap”.

I don’t know how many of you love your messed up life. I want you to start thinking about this mess- How did it first get created? Is this mess helping you in long term? And finally how to deal and enjoy the mess?

Once you start thinking about it. You’ll start better appreciating your life and the problems god has thrown upon you.

I believe a life devoid of all this mess would not be life at all. I love the mess and hence I keep creating more of it.

-ChoubeySahab

2 minute mantra.

Do you struggle with procastination? The subtle art of not giving a fuck for when something needs to be done. I’m a big time procastination. I hate this thing about myself more than all other bad things about me combined.

So I googled, “how to stop procastinating?”. There were several links like always. I started reading them all one by one.

Each article had several ways of getting the job done on time but very few of them made sense to me. Then I came across this method “2 minute mantra” which was modeled on Newton’s 1st law of motion.

Newton’s First Law states that an object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.

This applies to our body too. When our body is at rest, like in the morning when the alarm goes off, it tends to resist any change. It takes immense force to push yourself out of bed.

This is the same reason why we procastinate. We want to retain our state of idleness and this makes us postpone our work. Just like we postpone waking up early in the morning.

But then what is the solution. The very same law of motion also provides the solution to this problem. It says “objects in motion tend to stay in motion” which means that once we start working on something, we are most likely to finish the task off. That’s because once we set ourselves in motion, we tend to stay in motion and this helps our efficacy.

This brings us to the 2 minute mantra. This mantra says that instead of postponing your task, make yourself start with the task and do it for just 2 minutes. Once you do just 2 minutes of work on a task, the probability of you completing the task increases 10 fold.

This is because those 2 minutes do the job of putting our body to motion and as the body tries to retain it’s state, we end up completing the task more often than not.

I tried on this a couple of times and it worked well. I want you to try this as well and let me know if this works for you too.

Let’s hope it does.

-ChoubeySahab

Importance of direction

With the growing stress on “hardworking” and “hustle”, something that often gets neglected is the direction of your efforts.

For example, say you have to go from point A to point B on a plane. You start moving immediately after being given the task. While your friend takes a while standing at the starting point and wondering in what direction should he start moving.

You were a bit too driven by the hustle vibe that you didn’t consider pondering on the direction. What you thought is starting before your friend would give you a lead.

But as it turned out, you were lost midway, now thinking about what direction to go. While by this time the friend had already reached point B.

So you see here, the direction of your work is as important as how hard you work towards something. This is why the concept of smart work is picking up.

People are starting to realize that “hustle” and “hardwork” alone won’t get the desired results without utilising a bit of brains.

“Push your limits” but know the direction you are pushing them in. Remember you are not the horse just mindlessly moving forward, you are the thoughtful man sitting atop of it and guiding it in which direction to go.

Don’t be a horse, be a man.

-ChoubeySahab

Double face? Nah, plenty.

Do you know a double faceted person? Of course you do look in the mirror everyday. Did I just call you double face? Yes and why not. Ask yourself, are you the same person when in front of your friends and when in front of your parents.

The answer is most probably no. That’s because we all put on different faces in different situations to please the other party.

Now, you would argue that being a double face is a metaphor which means someone saying something on your face and something entirely different on someone else’s face is what is called double face.

Agreed, but here I’m trying to emphasize how we change our personality to suit the surroundings. We change the way we walk, talk and even who we mock.

I don’t see any bad in wearing all these faces until obviously when you start compromising your basic ethics. It’s all fine till you know your limits and try to best adjust to a situation.

Or in my view. Wearing different faces in front of different people is rather an important skill. It helps you make better connections. Let me clarify again, I don’t mean bitching about one friend while talking to another. I just mean making a subtle fine tune to the way you speak and behave according to the person you are talking.

Taking the same face in front of everyone is an old and primitive practice. For example, when I first meet someone, the first thing I try to gauge is what language (English or Hindi) is he better comfortable with. The next judgement I make is weather simple English would do or do I need to throw some difficult words here and there coupled with a weirdo accent. Different approaches work for different people.

Going with the exact same approach towards everyone won’t ever fetch me the desired results. So let’s accept it, we are living in the age of multi-face civilization. But this doesn’t mean we compromise our basic values to fine tune our approach.

Something we all need to learn is the skill to be multi-faceted without disrespecting anyone or anything. This is a complex skill to master but I think we’ll get there.

-ChoubeySahab

Instincts rule. (micro blog)

Has it ever happened to you that you take a decision based on what your gut says? The decision may not look logically sound but it turns out to be right more of often than not.

I trust my instincts a bit too much. The reason why I switched from science to commerce in 11th standard was based on instincts. I didn’t really have time to think this decision through but I went with what my inner conscience told me. It told me to make the switch and this decision turned out to be amazing for I was given the honor to be the president commerce society the very next year of this decision.

Today when I look back at it, it was a gutsy gamble that turned out well. But the stakes were high. Because my parents wanted me to be an engineer.

The point I’m trying to emphasize here is you should trust your instinct, a lot more than you already do. Take decisions based on it and then see how the results for those decisions fare.

Want to learn a new course, a new hobby then go ask your parents to get you to pursue that. Listen to that inner voice of yours, don’t ignore it off. As that is the sound of your heart. The organ that makes you do stupid but amazing things in life.

-ChoubeySahab

Misconception around maturity.

Maturity is something that I often see misinterpreted in our society. It is concieved as loosing the child in us and react to every situation with a serious state of mind.

But is that what maturity is? No it isn’t.

In my view, maturity is the ability to not loose the child in us while taking all those things seriously that need to be taken seriously.

An example to make it more clear. Celebrating like a maniac on winning a lottery by singing, jumping, dancing much like a child.

But then when your mother scolds you for something, you show utmost respect for her without instantly retaliating and trying to understand her point of view. This would be called maturity.

We have collectively accepted the wrong meaning of maturity. I no longer see children of 7-15 years of age playing cricket in my street and when I ask them why is that so? They say “Ab bache thodyi hai hum”.

I feel sad at that very moment because it is us who coded this perception around maturity in their heads. They are all in a hurry to be called mature beings.

But then I’m no different. When I was a kid of 7-15, I could easily find even college students playing street cricket but now even school goers feel ashamed of playing.

Big part of the reason here being neighbors taunting kids with statements like “Is this your age to do all this”.

We need to first figure out the narrative around age. What do we want to teach our kids? “Age is just a number” or “There is a certain age where you are expected to leave the child in you”. I would prefer the former.

Through this I want you to never ever mock anyone for childish behavior. Rather try to appreciate how they managed to securely keep this child alive despite the society wanting it killed.

Don’t be in a hurry to mature.

Or wait, never mature!

-ChoubeySahab

Read more than you can afford.

However much I may try to emphasize I can’t do justice to what importace it has in ones life. I am a firm believer of the fact- “What you read, you become”.

By reading I don’t mean reading your syllabus books and newspapers. I mean reading through and through whatever interests you.

There is already a hell lot of knowledge gained by people who lived before you and even more experienced people who are still alive. Many of them have gone through the effort to pen all that knowledge down in the form of books, articles and blog posts.

Most of these invaluable sources of knowledge are available on the internet for free. You don’t need to spend a dime to learn these days. All you need is a desire to learn and an internet connection obviously.

Also, it is a scientifically proven fact that the decisions of a well read person are much much better when compared to a not-so-well-read person.

Internet open up the “ocean of knowledge” in the most literal sense. It’s time we acknowledge this fact and accept it as our primary teacher.

It will take a lot of time for this to happen because it will involve challenging and questioning the status quo (eshtablished beliefs) but I’m hopeful, it’ll happen and soon.

-ChoubeySahab

Should we be scared of AI?

The most frequently asked question from a recent session on AI was this-Should we be scared of it?

The short answer is yes. An AI has the potential to self learn and if we develop it without setting it’s limitations then we are setting ourselves up for some really bad consequences.

Machines can be better than us in whatever we do. Once they reach that stage and no longer think it’s sensible to take orders from us old homo sapiens. It starts to take it’s own decisions. These decisions can be good/bad for us depending on how we trained the AI.

Now the next question that pops up right here is- why be scared when it’s in our hands to train the AI whichever way we want? This in itself the biggest reason to be scared. We don’t know what way of training should be given in order of us (humans) to be safe from them (machines).

We humans are masters at making mistakes. Though we learn from our mistakes, don’t we? But AI is such technology where 1 mistake in training it has the potential to decide the fate of humanity on this planet. Even if we learn from such a mistake, it would be too late to make any amends.

Yes we should be scared of AI. Because it’s only when we are scared that we will analyse each step into training an AI with utmost scrutiny and that’s exactly what’s desired.

This is the primary reason why prominent voices of Elon Musk and Bill Gates support regulation of AI development.

AI could be a technology where humans are crafting the end of their ownselves.

If you ever want to work in the AI development domain. Always keep in mind that the fate of humanity depends on this.

1 mistake and we’re all gone. Literally gone.

-ChoubeySahab

Dear change why do you happen?

Change as they say is inevitable. We can’t stop change from happening. The way we live, the things we use, the people, and everything changes with time.

They say the way to grow is to embrace change. But hell no. I don’t want change, I love the place where I live, I love the way I live, I love the people I love and I want none of it to change. Because change would mean new things and people replacing the old ones. I don’t want that.

I resist change like most of us do. But am I trying to change this resistance to change into acceptance to change. Again no.

I don’t find a reason to be an ideal person always. I can be what I wish to be. I think I will detest change forever because I love my present and the very thought of it changing scares me.

I know this is very much against what is the popular opinion on change and I accept that. I don’t want you to agree with me on this.

But my perspective on change is something that will never change.

I do acknowledge that change is important but not something I want. All I want is to be able to better appreciate my present.

-ChoubeySahab

Why did the world not end in 2012?

Because it wasn’t meant to. The whole thing about the world ending in 2012 because of an asteroid hitting Earth and wiping out the human species was hoax and backed by little science.

This was all over the news channels not just in India but across the globe. The reason why this was getting such airtime despite being false is that people were interested in this. After all it’s the question of life and death on this planet.

This lead to widespread panic in global population. But the media houses were happy as they knew noone is going to die and they’ll end up making a good profit out of this.

The last time that a big asteroid hit our planet was 65 million years ago, that’s when the dinosaurs we’re wiped out. Any such happening was not on cards in 2012 and NASA issued a proper clarification statement to clear out the panic.

But why was it 2012 that all this happened and not any other year is because the Mayan calendar (ancient calendar) ended on 21st December 2012. Which means there was no date beyond 21st December 2012, so some believed that this would mean the end of our time here on this planet. Which lead to the spread of panic and media eventually playing the devil’s role in spreading the panic.

The world didn’t end in 2012 and you know this because you are reading this post. Let’s be happy about the fact that it was just like we’ll spread. But at the same time sad about the fact the media isn’t responsible enough to knock down the line and rather preferring to make money out of the hype. Next time when such a thing pops up, don’t lend your trust to media sites, rather go to the official NASA site and confirm (given that it’s not hacked).

-ChoubeySahab