Sometimes I wonder where do I get all my gyan from. Sometimes
when talking to someone I amaze myself. I also did not know I knew all this
before I actually ended up speaking to someone about it. I know a lot of
reading helps. Most of the time you just dip into your memory and figure out
something that you actually read once upon a time and at the right time you
were able ot dig it out for complete effect. That’s the easier one to fathom. But
the difficult one to fathom is the one that you never knew at all. Like sometimes
when I teach math to Jispa – I too did not know that I knew what I taught. Simple
stuff that comes out mostly as logical deduction more than anything else. Like the
other day spoke about the concept of infinity. How anything divided by zero is
not zero but the answer is infinity (or indeterminate as I just learnt from
google). Explaining this to Jispa was a nice tough challenge. But after
explaining the concept explaining a practical example was even more fun. To keep
it short – I explained how if you invested 100 bucks in a lemonade stall from
your pocket money and made 50 bucks profit your profit percentage is 505 but if
you borrowed that money from someone and you made 50 bucks then your Return on
investment is – infinity (or indeterminate). That was fun.
We have been talking about a few things about town planning
and today she wanted to discuss it further. I explained that town planners need
to understand Brownian Motion. Each dust particle is impossible to predict but
a group of them are fairly predictable and stuff like that. Planner need to
understand this and make their planning. It was good fun.
Teaching is always fun. It’s the best way to retain what you
think you know. There is some concept of unconscious knowledge that resides in
all of us. Teaching brings this unconscious knowledge to the conscious self. I
love teaching. Teaching keeps my mind running active and alive. The other day
my digital agency wanted me to take a class for them on their offsite. They asked
for stuff that I normally teach in any case in colleges. One thing stood out
from the entire experience. They asked me for what presentation material I might
require – projector etc. On no. nothing – just a white board.thats it? No slides
no presentation, nothing. No dudes. I know this concept like the back of my
hand. I have been teaching these for many years now. That’s the real test of
knowing something I guess. So I took what was a roughly 6 hour lecture with
only a white board (large). I know what it is.
This knowledge that I try to pass on to my students helps me
in so many ways. It improves my grasp of the subject, makes me conceptually clear
and makes me revisit the logic again and again. I have found new logic, new criticisms
of the model and reinforced my beliefs in them. It’s so important to think aloud.
All my conversations with Jispa help me as much as all my teachings with anyone
else. Finally it’s a sum total of all things we do. Reading, talking,
listening, teaching come together in a potent combination. The thing is to have
enough of it.
The fun side is that when you meet a lot of people and read
other stuff, you gain a great ability to see the bullshit from the stuff being
thrown at you. It’s not easy for people to just simply lob pies at you. You
know what shit is being thrown and you can quickly ask the most pertinent
questions disarming the pie chucker. It happens in meetings all the time. Never
stop learning and never stop teaching what you have learnt.
Coming to random rubbish. Here is one shit piece I saw on
the internet. Read and laugh about loud. They say planning a trip gives a high
level of happiness and after the trip you feel unhappy. Well that’s pretty intuitive
but their conclusion is worth a million bucks – plan a trip but don’t take it…
Plan a trip – but don't
take one
As opposed to actually taking a holiday, it
seems that planning a vacation or just a break from work can improve our
happiness. A study published in the journal, Applied Research in Quality of
Life showed that the highest spike in happiness came during the planning stage
of a vacation as employees enjoyed the sense of anticipation: In the study, the
effect of vacation anticipation boosted happiness for eight weeks. After the
vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people.
If you can't take the
time for a vacation right now, or even a night out with friends, put something
on the calendar—even if it's a month or a year down the road. Then whenever you
need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about it.
I am reminded of a joke once told at the family dinner
table.
Once a guy took a cockroach and cut one leg and said – run. The
cockroach ran. Then he cut one more and said – run. The cockroach ran. This went
on till the cockroach was left with one leg. Run – the cockroach still ran as
best as he could. After all the legs were cut and the guy yelled – RUN. The cockroach
refused to move. The guy wrote in his science journal the conclusion – after cutting
six legs of the cockroach, the cockroach turns deaf.
