Lessons a Clock in Zurich Taught Me

Today early after noon while standing at a small railway station just at outskirts of Zurich a traditional clock hanging at platform taught me a wonderful lesson. Swiss are famous for their watches and time keeping but the lesson this conventional hanging clock taught me was some what very remarkable. 

When I arrived in Zurich today, I was very calm to enjoy the re-experience. One tip I would like to share about travel is, don’t hesitate to pay a little more if that makes you reach any  place well in day time. At airport exit by chance I met a person Alberto who accompanied me to the train station mentioned above. We took tram, walked and talked. He seemed to be a warm blooded European and soon I discovered the reason, he was an Italian!. 

Any way coming back to the clock. Please watch the video embedded at the end of blog of that clock. All clocks work in same way but this clock was remarkable in sense it was clear and attracted my attention. It is story about continuous movement of second’s arm and movement by minute’s arm by one minute. I noticed that second’s arm start from 12 (our starting point for the case), passed towards the minute’s arm slowly, passed it and moved towards the place of 12. The minute’s arm only moved one minute ahead when the second’s arm passed the position of 12 and not when it passed the minute’s arm.

This was great lesson of the day and based upon that lesson I prepared following illustration. It presents a wall clock with Minute’s Arm and movement of Second’s arm in two colors, blue and red. Lets analyze this illustration starting from top right corner numbered as 1, and move in clock wise direction. 

In the top right corner the minute’s arm seems  to be at number 1 on clock. In second figure it is about at 5, in 3rd it is at 8 while in last one it is at 11, nearest to ultimate goal i.e. 12. I call the blue track of second’s arm’s movement as Asset while that in red color as Credit. The clock taught me following two lessons about success in life especially in career.

When you are in starting phase (like figure 1) you have very less amount of Assets and you have to put a lot of effort as Credit to move just one step ahead. As you build up your skills, the amount of credit required decreases with being minimum shown in figure 4. In this case you rely on your asset and need very small extra effort to move ahead.

The second and more important lesson was related to the instance when the minute’s arm move a step ahead with respect to the position of second’s arm. As you’ll notice from embedded video below, the minute’s arm did not move a step ahead when second’s arm reaches it or crosses it. The minute’s arm moved ahead only when a certain amount of extra effort was put in place beyond the existing level of existence of minute’s arm.

In simple words, you always need to build on assets to maintain your position, always need to invest (credit) to move ahead and finally in order to move ahead a single step you may need to apply an effort of few steps (depending upon your assets value).

Here is the mentioned video, please comment.

Professionally being in Quadrant IV

In my previous blog dated 15 August 2012, Professional Life, Where do you Stand? I introduced a simple Quadrant Tool to find your position in professional life. Following was the mentioned simple Quadrant.

One needed to assess him/herself on two scales i.e. Passion about what he/she is doing and his/her ability to do that certain work.  Scoring was done with 1 as least and 5 as the highest score for each category. Based upon this scoring one would be located in one of the quadrants shown in figure.

We have already discussed Quadrant I known as quadrant of Satisfied people and Quadrant III of struggling people. Today we'll discuss the Quadrant IV which is labeled as of Incompetent. 

It is easiest to understand but very difficult to diagnose & figure out. No one would like to call him/her incompetent and that is true. No one is incompetent but the most important issue for this tool is to make assessment against the work being done at the moment. You might landed in type of work you are currently doing due to one or another reason. You might have also developed some skills and passion for it. If this passion is natural or you developed it to limits above score of 2.6 with ability still below 2.5, you'll be in Quadrant IV.

People in this quadrant might be under great stress, much more than those in quadrant I of struggling people. People in Quadrant I are struggling both with ability and passion but they have less degree of frustration because they also don't have enough passion for the said work. However those in Quadrant IV have enough of passion but can not perform the job and this creates a lot of anxiety, stress and frustration.

There are two ways to get rid of this problem. The first one is to develop passion for something you are able to do, which seems less practical. The other way is to develop the skills in the work you are doing with great passion. Now-a-days as lot and lot of skills building tools are available like online learning the two most important issues are about selection of appropriate tool and devotion of time.

You must invest a good amount of time and may be financial resources also to find the most appropriate skill building forum. There are many free but in actual there is no free lunch. Quality level training and development needs financial investment to some degree. You must also be patient while developing your skill and follow the learning curve without trying to jump over to few stairs up in one go. This seems appropriate if you are experienced in the field you are studying but it will for sure leave some connections in the chain weaker. A chain is as much strong as its weakest link is!

In summary if you have passion for the work you are doing but lack the ability then you and your work both deserves improvement. Choose from simplest doable tools like free reading stuff, listening to gurus of your profession at Youtube, reading books, attending seminars and webinars and finally attending the paid on campus or online courses. If you find a master who is willing to teach also then you can also learn a lot but don't forget no matter what you learn you have to validate it through a certificate or diploma. There are only few professional branches in which you can move up based upon your work but that movement is also limited. CEO of Yahoo,  Scott Thompson was able to move to top but his work could not keep him there as he could not validate his skills through a legitimate source.

Happy Children and Stressed Adults

Concerning happy and somewhat careless behaviour of children, it is stated that their lack of full understanding of events is behind this cheerful behaviour. Unfortunately I have to disagree with this diagnosis. Children can be considered as miniature of adults. We are still not sure if the brain usage in children is above, equal or less than that done by an adult. Children of ages less than 7 have shown remarkable achievements in many fields. Although this has happened in selected children and not all, the idea can not be generalized in both ways. We can’t say that all children can be genius and we can’t say that they are not. It all depends upon what circumstances they face during their childhood.

As children grow we see more and more stressed adults coming out of them. Has it been related to use of brain or other capacities it should be the opposite. Now able to use brain they must have been happier. Taking responsibility and need to earn the bread and butter may make the adults less happy than their counterpart children. We don’t have all the adults stressed but most of them are stressed except one category of adults mentioned by Hazret Steve Jobs. In his speech of 2005 at Stanford University he finished by quoting, stay hungry stay foolish from Whole Earth Catalogue’s last edition.

This is the key to happiness of children and selected adults. 

Children are foolish as they don’t care for norms, conditions and customs and try to behave the way they consider right. They try to learn the things their way and mostly through experiments. On the other hand among them who face strict controlling mechanisms fade out either due to restrictions or forced guidance to behave in a certain manner. A child starts learning by exploring his/her bed and its surroundings in random way. A child is asked to paint in circle and if left alone he/she would paint the whole page without caring for the border of circle. On the other hand when he/she is forced to paint within circle, he/she may learn it but for sure the child would be less happy. In addition to this when a child understands that society wants him/her to behave and learn in a certain way, the learning process becomes that of disciplined mind. The child when grown up might be successfull but it would be only a small part of the original potential, most of which is destroyed during the disciplined process of teaching rather than learning. 

Coming to the first part of the statement i.e. stay hungry is simple to understand. It means that one should always create space for new food. This new food is learning. A famous quote in this regard is, ‘children are happy as they learn’. If as an adult one wants to stay happy he/she should stay hungry for new food (for thought). 

As a result it can be stated that a simple way for adults to remain happy and less stressed is to keep on learning and especially in unconventional way. 

I want to give a tip to adults in this regard. When you  want to learn something or try to do something new, stop thinking like an adult and go ahead in the way a child would have gone. This would demolish the barriers around your thoughts restricting the way you think and act. 

Don’t forget adults learn through acting (same true for children till age of 7-10, after which they are accustomed to learning through books). Therefore take a risk and go for learning under unknown environment and new situation. 

For many of the professionals who left their schools years ago, jumping back in to a session at their or any other school may recharge their thought process in a different way.

Those who can’t dare to jump this much (after passing years in the disciplined system), I suggest to take some casual courses to lower the barriers before a revolutionary step can be taken. A course on logic is going to be offered soon through Stanford University and its free, click for details!

Internal Perception and External Factors for Happiness

Some good 17 years ago I was reading a book on Psychology in which perception phenomenon was explained. It was explained so remarkably that I still remember it and would like to share it with all. It was like this.

You are coming back to home after a hectic day and very busy evening making you leave office at time to fetch the last metro to your home. Everyone in the compartment was tired like you, trying to rest with closed eyes. When the metro stops at a certain station, suddenly a person with two children of ages 5 and 3 enters the compartment. They sat on some vacant seats but just after a minute or so the children start playing, running and shouting in the compartment. The guy however did not take any notice and kept on sitting silently sleeping with open eyes. 

Question was asked what would be your and most of other passengers’ reaction? Most would consider the person irresponsible for not caring about other people and children as non-disciplined. Finally you stand up and ask the said person to control his children as every one was tired and upset due to the noises being made by children. 

The guy looks at you and says, ‘I am sorry, I can’t do any thing (you and all others re-assess him as irresponsible). Their mother was diagnosed with cancer some time ago and about an hour ago doctor told us that her body is not responding to any type of treatment. Tell me how I may tell this to these playing kids?’... the author of book asks about your and others’ reaction now to same event (noise making children).

This hypothetical story explains the link between our internal perception to external factors and our reaction very clearly. Students of Psychology know it very well that the cycle of behaviour runs through an event-our perception-our reaction to it. Let me try to further elaborate it with another hypothetical example.

You along with your family plan to go on a brief picnic. Packed in your car you drive towards city suburb for green fields.  Kids are happy, their mom is happy, you are happy to spend time with family. At the last traffic light you are forced to take the side lane due to rash driving of some youngsters driving their cars. They were about to hit your car, you become angry and upset. Now from here onward, it is your internal perception to this external factor shaping your reaction and life.

If you perceive that this event has ruined your mood, your reaction would be staying upset and angry resulting in a disastrous picnic for you, your kids and the partner. On the other hand if you perceive this event as one, not in your control, not due to you- you will perceive it as a non linked issue to your life and your reaction would be not caring for it and not allowing it to ruin your picnic. This can save your and yours’ day.

Now lets say that you were so upset that your reaction to the event ruined whole picnic program. Analyze what  you achieved, the event took place without your input but it destroyed your plan. So in other words you allowed an external factor to influence your own life. 

In cases where you really feel it impossible to control your mood, I suggest to do following. Try to be calm for few seconds and imagine yourself as not part of that specific situation. Tell yourself, yes this specific action has made my mood bad but if I also allow it to affect my picnic plan the situation would be much worse and not better.

One of the major issues is, if you consider yourself and your loved ones as ‘centre of gravity’ of your life or some external factor. Secondly if you allow some external event to destroy your life or any planned activity which will have double bad effect i.e. you allowed that event to make you feel bad and you missed your own planned activity and its happiness. Therefore be sure about who or what is centre of gravity for your life and never mind asking if you get stressed and mess up some planned good time, what was your gain? If you consider these two simple tips not to effect your life and its events you may feel happy under different circumstances.