my next role model

It would not do justice if i talked about my mom and not about my sister. She is my dearest closest friend. Though my parents say we never ever fought over anything in our childhood. it is hard to believe since i see so many siblings fighting for everything. I do not remember fighting for toys, since mostly she considered them baby toys and did not come near mine .... ;). but i remember us fighting over clothes.

I adored her when i was a kid (even now)and always wanted to wear her clothes, how much ever loose fitting they might be. and she hated that to the core because u know they are her clothes, and did not want to share. She always believed in uniqueness. She used to search for a shoe that none of her friends wore in the past, for a whole day in more than 10 shops and never felt tired about that.

She is the more matured than me in our house. She helped dad in house budget and finances as soon as she entered college, while i mostly went home from hostel to relax, watch tv, read books, and eat heartily :). I always look up to her and try (remember i said try) to be perfect like her.

she always knew when and how to soothe me, she knows what mood i am in anytime, she understands my feelings, she says the right things, she showers her love for me, and most important of all she is the only one who understands me whenever i go jetspeed in my talks. when we were kids my parents used to say me and my sister came home from school and i used to talk in ultra speed about what happened in school. My parents used to listen to the end, and turn to my sister to say "Sona, why dont u translate what your sister just said" .... It would be like greek and latin to my parents, but my sister always understood what i tried to convey. that is why she is my dearest friend.

My role model

I am writing about women achievers, and I thought who can be a more personal woman role model than our own mother? the answer is 'none'. I have seen my mom struggle with daily unseen and seen forces of life. She takes two buses to reach the college where she is now HOD of Chemistry department. about two hours of to and fro travel in dust, pollution and hot summers. It took her about 25 years to reach this highly esteemed position of Head of the Department. 25 years of perseverance, honesty, passion, bad times, and good times. 

What made her the HOD today is her passion forteaching, passion for guiding young minds in the right direction. She is a very cool mom, mainly because she spends most of her day with youths. She knows how younger generation thinks and she adapts herself, in order to be a good example of righteous values. I am proud to say that my interest in learning new things comes from my mother, and my maturity to take the right decisions at the right time ( I hope they are matured decisions. only time can tell) comes from my father. 

Now you tell me , who can be a better role model than our own mother?

What is the value of PI

Have you felt embarrased that you do not even know your sister's phone number unless you have your cell phone with you? Have you had details remembering project details in a meeting with your manager? Do you want to enthrall your friends by telling them the number of PI upto some N number of decimals? Do you sigh, when someone gets recognised for super duper memory? Well, there is a good news for you, remembering things strongly is not a superman's deed. Anybody can do it. With some little practice and dedication of course. But hey the rewarding consequences overweight the hardwork needed. Retaining the important things in our life is most essential factor in leading a peaceful life. You can easily remember you wife's birthday, your tax benefits, and any other complicated things, which you normally tend to forget. You can convey your wishes on your manager's son's birthday, and earn a few brownie points in ur work place. you can keep important phone numbers in your finger tip in case you need them in emergency and your cell is out of battery power. I have always some problem with remembering hard or complex things. The way I remember things are like studying one day before exam. When I started preparing for my GRE exam, this drawback pulled me even more backwards. So I decided to roll up my sleeves, take a drink of water, and challenge it with audacity. But what techniques do I follow to improve my memory retainment skills. I read a lot of related books and articles and here is what they all say. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Memory tends to retain more stuff into long term memory room (sort of like a hard disk), if things are repeatedly added to the short term memory ( like a RAM). I tried this method for a few days, and it worked. I was able to remember details after practice, which I would normally forget. Great, but wait, this is not enough. I spending extra time in the repetition process, which could be spent wisely otherwise. So I need a more enhanced technique in which I would remember things after just one study. It should be strong enough that whenever I try to recollect, I should be able to remember all the items without much sweat. It is at this point of time, that I came across this site. This website gave me all I needed to deal with studying one time, and remembering it for a long time. I specifically like the peg system and substitute system. It worked wonders for me. I am able to remember lists, odd data and what not using a combination of the methods mentioned in the website. I would suggest you too try it and see how it works. This generic method will be of value to people in all aspects of life - students, professors, software engineers, doctors, astronomers, researchers, housewives, and you name it. Hey everyone wants a pat on the back from time to time. Its increases self esteem, and makes life easier.

What we learn from success stories

I read an article which posts the conversation of Mr. Iwata of Nintendo Wii during one of his visits to the office. He talks about the reasons behind creation of world famous games. The little chat is segmented into eleven sections, three of which was posted online, and the rest are expected soon. You can read the conversation here, before reading my blog, because I am not going to talk about what he says during that supper time. Well actually I am going to write about that only, but from a different perspective. His little talk is pretty clear by itself. But the analysis of Mr. Itoi's and Mr. Iwata's actions and the reasons behind them are discussed here. Disclaimer: This is my first blog on net. So if it has any information that is not intended to be published online, then I ask for forgiveness of my ignorance. (i hope to laugh at this line when I come back after few years of experience in blogging.) 

With all due respect to Mr. Iwata, I start my first blog. In the first section, Mr. Iwata talks about Mr. Miyamoto's definition of "ideas". It is something which solved multiple issues at once. The former goes on an elaborate discussion explaining what the definition means. During the conversation, Mr. Shigesato Itoi, explains the concept to his staff, with a simple yet effective example. This showcases the great dedication Mr. Itoi has, in keeping his staff inline with the concept, to make it interesting to the listeners, and to grab their undivided attention. He wishes his staff members to learn from Mr. Iwata's words, and as a manager, is concerned about his team's interests too. This is an industrial management lesson to be learnt from Mr. Itoi, for those who aspire to become great managers themselves. 

In the next section, Mr. Iwata talks about viewing things over someone else's shoulder, which is known to me as "third person's point of view", which I heard for the first time from my Mother's brother-in-law Mr. Swaminathan, when I was in my childhood days. I call him periappa (note: I am from Tamil Nadu, India). I remember him sitting on our living room floor, and explaining the concept to me. Ever since I have tried to master that quality, and even after nearly 8 years, I am still on the process. I guess some things take longer time than you expect. Anyways coming back to Mr. Iwata's insight, as he was clarifying the notion, he has said that during early times, when he was a game programmer, his games were less popular than that of Mr. Miyamoto's games, and he proceeded to find out the reason behind his "low-selling-games" and to make his games as popular as Mr. Miyamoto's. The important thing to notice here is Mr. Iwata's attitude about his failures. It is remarkable that instead of going down the drains, thinking " ya My Miyamoto's games are popular, he is a great person, I can't think like him, I can not reach his level, " and other similar negative thoughts, he actually was eager to fill the gap, and to make his games as successful as Mr. Miyamoto's. 

This kind of thinking reminds me of Steve Pavlina's blog the abundance mindset In this blog, Pavlina has dealt with the mindset of abundance. Instead of seeing someone spending $10k on a hotel as an "outrageous act", if a person starts to see that, as a possibility of them rising to that level of spending, then he would move up from his position. Similar kind of mindset can be seen with Mr. Iwata's action of reasoning out his failure, and moving towards success. He started analyzing Mr. Miyamoto's reasons behind success, and succeeded in his attempt. The trigger for such action is his frustration, frustration that his game did not sell out as expected. In the same section, Mr. Iwata had talked about Mr. Miyamoto's strategy of letting a novice user play his game and watching his actions and reactions from the back. This aspect is highly important for a product company, whose final aim is to make the product popular among the users. No use in creating a product for the developer's satisfaction right? It is the end users who are going to use the product in the end. This concept is the core one in the User Interface Design class, which I took during spring semester. The one thing to keep in mind throughout the software cycle of development is "users, users, users". Mr. Itoi has expressed that Mr. Miyamoto was making use of what he studied in college in developing great games. It is not the subject matter that Mr. Miyamoto was implementing, for he did industrial design degree in his college, but the basic concept of observation, users' point of view, and picking the correct answers from the user's response. Many of us, including me are under the notion that what we learnt in college has no relevance to what we do for living. 

This is true especially for Indians like me who do MS in USA and then get a job here. It is true to some extent, in that we might not use all the technology that we learnt, or we might be using an altogether different platform or technology in the company. But that doesn’t mean that our college education is mere waste or just a portal to enter the US corporate section. Certain technologies that we learn in college might not be used in our career. But the cognitive thinking behind it, the approach, reasoning, and observation that we subconsciously learn at the college goes a long way with our career and personal life. Many of us fail to recognize these gems of education. If we realize these intricate qualities and consciously nourish them, the probability of success is more. More to come as the talk gets updated.

What makes us motivated?

In our life, we try to do so many things. some are close to our heart, some are duties, some are our general nature, and some out of mere obligations. but what makes us really motivated to do all these things? can this motivation be forced into us? Sometimes the same work, i feel like doing it with great interest, no stress, no pressure, enjoying an doing it. Other times the same work i feel like it is taking loong loong time to get done, and i am doing without any interest. how can the same work be interesting one day and not the other? i have to do somemthing to make it interesting otherwise the stress from doing non interesting work would literally kill me. i am that kind of person who would like to do things because i like to do them. so i try to convert my obligations and routine work into something interesting. sometimes i play some music while washing dishes. i long time ago threw away the practice of listening to songs while doing serious work like studying or project because i found that giving my sole attention to the important thing helps me finish it fast. sometimes i do things without motivation and i certainly do not like to blame it on the weather or time or that i am busy with other things. I like to search the answers deep within, and if it is solvable i will be more than happy to solve it and go back to my cheerfullness.

I know i cannot turn back time and go back to my innocent childhood, but i try hard to preserve the meager amount of innocence left in me. sometimes it is hard to find any motivation at all, but u still have to do things because they are important to other people. and there making them smile and feel happy for completing the work is my motivation. sometimes i feel lazy to do stuff which has to be done immediately, there i try to find the motivation in the consequences or in short using fear as my motivation. sometimes i feel like i am trying to constantly consciously do things which should come to me naturally like others, there my motivation is "as i practise more they will come to me naturally". have you ever watched kids when they do household tasks? 

They pretend they are ordering their enemies to withdraw from the war when they throw the trash out. they pretend the beans have small hands and feet and are trying to run away from them and that they should eat them before they get out of plate. they pretend and pretend and pretend to make the mundane tasks easier and interesting, and within no time they would have completed the job and not feel a big deat about it. we could also try this pretend logic sometimes to make our so called adult boring jobs to be more interesting. so either it be a mundane task, or a really interesting one, the main thing to keep in mind is to do the right thing. if u feel it is the right thing to do, then grab any motivation that comes to u or spin any virtual motivation threads and hold on to it strongly. who knows it might work ;)