Connecting the dots....which way?

In his landmark speech at Stanford in 2005 Steve Jobs mentioned how he took class on calligraphy which made no sense at that time but later helped him to design the perfect key board. This was a clear example how the dots could be connected backward. There is a less known English saying, ‘tools find jobs to be done just as jobs find tools(to be used)’. Connecting the dots backward is something very similar to this. It implies that you collect the tools which seem irrelevant at that instant but may help you gain a success in future. 

I agree and fully agree with the term and its usefulness. However the times of Steve Jobs and before him collecting tools was good enough as market was not so competitive then. Now as days are passing the market is becoming more and more competitive and people are required to achieve more in lesser time. Hence connecting dots onward is becoming more important than connecting them backward. Yes a tool gained un-intentionally could become a great asset sometime in future but right tool attained at right time can increase chances of success and reduce wastage of time.

Giving a simple example one can plan his/her career by going through forecast reports telling what would be in demand in future. Getting ready for future is the single most important tool to have the future. When Steve Jobs was sent out of Apple he established Next and Pixar. Both of which were not for connecting the dots backward but for meeting a future need and filling a gap. Similarly when he was back to Apple after a while he started thinking about iPad and iPhone which were all connecting the dots forward not backward.

In summary its not a bad idea to collect few tools coming on way for any future potential use (to connect dots backward) but one should actively find and create dots that help him/her to connect them to future.

3 Great Lessons from Hazret Steve Jobs

In this so called modern era marks of Hazret Steve Jobs can not be avoided unless one is living in some pre-historic and non discovered region of the earth. Most strikingly although world wide web (www) was not discovered by him but it was developed on a computer known as Next produced by the company with same name and owned by Steve Jobs. Later his venture led to invention of wi-fi. Taking these two products down from shelves would immediately change this era from modern age to the middle ages.

I was reading a wonderful book about him entitled, ‘Steve Jobs -The man who thought different’ by Karen Blumenthal recently. Although whole book is wonderful but three lessons extracted by the author about Steve Jobs were amazing. I could not resist myself from sharing them here.

The first one is about focus. In fact Steve Job’s point of view in this regard coincides with that of Ibn Khaldun stated about 700 years ago. Ibn Khaldun wrote in his book Muqadimmah that time has come (!) when there is a great pollution of information. A lot of information is becoming available to every one. People are using it without knowing how to analyze or produce it. Steve Job also said similar thing while describing focus. He stated, ‘People think focus means saying yes to the thing you have got to focus on - (however) focus means saying No to the one hundred other good ideas there are. You have to pick carefully’. He stressed upon rejection of non-related issues resulting in focusing to the required one. It is simple to understand as rejecting the non required and distracting issues would help one to concentrate and handle the one he/she should have been doing. 

Being easy said, it is not easy enough to implement. This is explained well by the second lesson explained in the said book i.e. ‘simple can be harder than complex’. This explains a lot of things why humans intend to make complex analysis, decisions and products. It is easy to do so because this involves a lot of constraints and dimensions and any related failure can be blamed on one of them or one of the unknown complex reasons. However once your analysis, decision and product is simple, it becomes more difficult to find a reason for failure or an issue to blame. Creating simple thing is difficult and so is defending it. For simple products if they don’t serve the purpose they are not of any other use! Thats why simple devices thought by Steve Jobs when served their purposes were hot cakes.

Lastly Steve Jobs believed that if someone does not keep planning for future he wouldn’t have any! It is also restated by some other experts as ‘failure to prepare is preparing for the failure’. One always need to plan for future and most of us may do it quite well. However the success comes to only those who dare to risk failures in their quest to implement those plans.

Lastly may I dare to disagree with Hazret Steve Jobs famous saying ‘dots are connected backward only’. This is true but there are other ways also to connect the dots for success. This issue I’ll be explaining hopefully in my next blog soon.

Exposure and Wb Formula

Taking it from the end of last blog where I quoted a professor of mine Prof. Coskun Yurteri stating, ‘America is all about exposure’ I can elaborate further and say ‘life is all about exposure’! In our acquaintances we can easily find people who had exposure to experiences of life or different conditions. When compared one can easily notice the difference in behaviour and perspectives of those who had the exposure and who did not get such a chance.

We also notice that many people with higher level of education (merely degrees) behave and act in much worse manner than those who although do not have education but have exposure and knowledge. Exposure in its own state is a very powerful tool towards creation of a successfull personality and when and if it is combined with knowledge, a person of very fine texture comes in to being like my good friend Mr. Fahim A. Balkhi.

There are three types of exposures, Intentional, Un-intentional and Reactionary. Intentional exposure is active exposure where someone shows his/her willingness and effort. It can be attributed with ease to people who travel around the globe  for sake of seeking the knowledge or having new experiences. Unintentional exposure is the passive type of exposure where one does not make any effort but is left to certain exposure for good or bad. No one would like to have bad exposures intentionally but for the later type bad exposures are risks. 

None of the exposure goes in vain. As well documented by life of a legend of our time Steve Jobs the founder of Apple, nothing went un-connected. Exposures become really useful if one strives to gain knowledge from them and uses the experiences gained as building blocks for future use. Being exposed to certain situation, place or reality is much less important than the analysis of that specific experience. The analysis of any situation would lead to the gain of knowledge. The most simple tool for this is called Wb by me. Wb stands for ‘whats the benefit?’. It is easy to remember as World Bank (WB) also works on same principle!

Wb requires that anyone going through a certain good or bad experience or exposure should withdraw the conclusion based upon ‘whats the benefit (for him/her)?’ from that specific event. People are exposed to many situations but this exposure serves as building blocks for future only if situations are analyzed, the issue of Wb is addressed and some type of record is kept about it. Non-recorded experiences is lost experience! While analyzing any bad or failure exposure one may record the failure and the reasons behind it but more importantly should concentrate on question of ‘how it could have been avoided or situation improved’. 

The last type of exposure is Reactionary which can be intentional or unintentional i.e. active or passive. It may switch between both types from time to time. The common examples of this type of exposure is someones involvement in a certain issue after some event i.e. as a reaction. Most striking example of reactionary exposure is of Mr. Arnoud van Doorn after he noticed world wide protests against the film he supported against Islam few years back. His reactionary exposure led him to discover very different aspects and changed his whole life.

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!

Education System - Are we completely lost Globally?

Modern education system of our time is producing educated people but with least knowledge of use. Students strive to learn a lot of subjects of which they excel in only limited and also only limited people are able to do. Putting an effort of almost 16 years to finish university and ending up as master of none is a real pity. Education system of past was concentrating on useful knowledge gain through student teacher interaction and without restriction of school boundary. It produced great people in every part of globe but our modern system failed to do so and we can count on fingers the number of people who left an impact during last 2 centuries.

Almost all great achievers of their times received minimum formal education or a combination of formal and informal education. Formal education as defined by current situation is simply a diploma generating mechanism. This formal system can be traced back only to 500 hundred years. West mainly developed it. Its a famous story that when British planned to take India, their Consultant told them that education system of India was producing people with useful knowledge and skills and this must be changed. Therefore they introduced disciplined education system where students were memorizing the logarithms that were of least practical use for them. This disciplined system is also mentioned in a great book ‘Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and The Soul-Battering System that Shapes Their Lives’ By Jeff Schmidtas. He wrote, ‘For understanding the professional, the concept of ideology will emerge as much more useful than that of skill.’ In short skill is missing from our disciplined minds!’

What exactly was the system and reasoning which produced greatest minds of their times? There were two major reasons behind the success of that system. First one was undisciplined education system. The system was not forcing one to become some one but it was facilitating him/her to become what he/she intended to become. It was a flow of knowledge from teacher rather than the books. Second reason was concentration on a single subject rather than trying to learn many.

Undisciplined education system implies that there was no boundary for place or content. One needed not to go to college or university to get the knowledge. It could have been achieved at any place. The greatest scholar of his time Avicenna   learned astrology from a grocer who happened to be an Indian with its knowledge. In old times we frequently heard that great journeys were made by students to reach some master of its time and gain knowledge from him/her. As a result of such journeys the student was not attending classes from the master but in fact was spending time with this great master. During that time he/she was able to learn the habit of education. Ibn Khaldun considers this habit of education more important than education itself. Famous British Historian Arnold J. Toynbee considers Ibn Khaldun, the founder of philosophy of Economics, some branches of Psychology and Study of Civilization as creator of the greatest valued work. This habit was neither achieved through spending a semester with the teacher nor with 40 minutes lecture a day. It was almost 24 hours in touch scenario. It is known that Avicenna was able to takeover his teachers by age of 14, this was the main reason! It also implies that content was not strictly dictated. Students were able to choose subject of their choice. We know it can be of great value as also mentioned by Hazret Steve Jobs in his lecture at Stanford in 2005.

In Islamic school of thought teacher has always been important. It is said that great Caliph and companion of Prophet Mohammad, Hazret Ali stated, ‘who ever taught me even a single word is my teacher’. Teacher student relationship has always been key to success. A student used to be proud of his famous teacher and vice versa. When a student was able to supersede his/her teacher, the teacher was more than happy. A teacher used to have thousands of students of a certain subject. Bahudin Zakeriya, a great scholar based in Multan is said to have more than 20,000 students attending his lectures on religious matters at same time. Today a similar approach is used using World Wide Web by ‘coursera’ a web site providing free online courses from leading University teachers from Stanford, Princeton, John Hopkins and many others.

The second reason was that minds were concentrating on a single subject. Modern science is telling us that human brain can learn almost anything it wants. A child can learn several languages before age of 5 and many other things. In fact it is the half-truth and half-truth is always more dangerous than a complete lie. Yes our brains can learn almost every thing, but not in the way modern formal and disciplined education system is promoting. Looking back at giants one can see whether it were Greek, Pagan, Roman, Muslim or Modern Age scientists, they worked on a particular issue for a very long time. This long-term interaction with a specific subject did not stop them from becoming master of other subjects also. Almost all great achievers were good at Philosophy and Logic, which are quite contradictory subjects. Therefore being an expert in one field does not hinder success in any other.

From Muslim achievers till 12th century one can see that most of them were equally good in many fields. It took only 2 years of Avicenna at age of 16 to become the Royal Physician. His statements about healthy body and combating with diabetes are same as used by modern age doctors. He is also considered as father of clinical treatment and diabetic diagnosis. (Ref: wikipedia, Avicenna) He acquired basics of all this in 2 years. Similarly he wrote few hundred treatises on Mathematics also. There are numerous such cases. Similarly Al Jazari, the father of Robotics spent his whole life working on mechanic systems. He was also inventor of world’s first automatic water extracting system and drink machines (Ref: History Channel, Al Jazari). Similar has been cases with Galileo, he was unfortunately enrolled in modern medical college but when he discovered his interest in mathematics, he shifted to it and later worked in that field, and this happened because he accidentally attended a geometry class! We all know that Darwin spent a good part of his life studying evolution although he was intended to become a doctor but ended up as a naturalist. Sir Isaac Newton worked extensively on selected fields. However unfortunately the gravitation theory proposed by him was exact copy of the theory explained by Ibn Khaldun in his famous book Muqadimmah (1378).

One can easily see that modern formal education starts with a bit of this and a bit of that approach. A student may end up spending 16 years of education to become Jack of All but Master of None. When we see the successful athletes or sports men we clearly see that most of them have concentrated on a single skill and succeeded. A similar approach is required while educating the children. Quoting Ibn Khaldun, the greatest evaluator of civilizations, one can see that he wrote in Muqadimmah’s part on education system that a child should start learning music, then astronomy, logic, philosophy etc. for 2-3 years each and religious education should not start before age of 7. Considering this suggestion of 2-3 years, one can see that great mathematician Omer Khayaam spent 3 years learning math, Avicenna spent 2 years to become a physician.

For a comparison reason let us calculate the time required to gain a good base of a certain subject as per modern education system. If a student in formal modern system studies on average 2 hours a day a certain subject making it 10 hours a week (of 5 days) or 40 hours a month. For any 1-year education system it is almost 10 months making it 400 hours. If continued for 16 years, it makes 6400 hours. Now taking another student who studies a certain specific subject in accordance with his aptitude and age for 8 hours a day will need 800 days to finish same material which is simply not too more than 2 years. Somewhere back in history some one was clever enough to play with the education system making it wasteful for students.

Lastly, let us see what Noam Chomsky who is considered as father of modern linguistic and most important intellectual of our century says about education system. ‘According to Chomsky there is an instrumental approach to education. It is characterized as mindless, meaningless drills and exercise given "in preparation for multiple choice exams". Chomsky suggests that society simply reduces education to the requirement of the market. Students are trained to be compliant workers (Ref: The Educational Theory of Noam Chomsky, 2011 New Foundations). Very last information about this great master of our time, Chomsky's primary education was undertaken at Oak Lane Country DaySchool, an independent institution that focused on allowing its pupils to pursue their own interests in a non-competitive atmosphere!

Simplest Personal Development Tool - WAP

A great difference exists between USA and other countries on the planet. No matter you like the country or you hate its governments, one has to admit that something is really different up there.  This something has transformed USA in to worlds' (considering its superiority in space program more than one world is a valid case) super power. In addition to natural resources, military power and a culture of spending time and effort, the single most important difference exists in style of children raising.

In most of the world including Europe it is very common to ask a small child what will you become when grown up? based upon exact location parents expect answers as Engineer, Doctor, Bureaucrat and to some degree Musician, Writer. In the original USA style the question and answer both are different. The question asked to child (if asked) is what will you do when grown up? Therefore even if the person holds a super ordinary job, he is proud of it as he/she is doing something not just holding a profession.

Try putting the question 'What does Google do?' to someone on street. The probable answer would be 'it is a search engine' or at best 'it helps to make search'. The second answer seems to be true but try putting this question to google itself and the answer would be  'Google is a global technology leader focused on improving the ways people connect with information. Google primarily generates revenue by delivering relevant, cost-effective online advertising.' 

See the difference, the success of google lies in the fact that they know exactly what they do or should be doing. Unfortunately most of us never find answer to this simple question. Guy Kawasaki in his lecture 12 lessons I learnt from Steve Jobs, said that while being interviewed for your ideas by investors you must tell what on hell you do in first 30 seconds. Agreed, but I would like to take the idea to self development case.

I would suggest using the simple tool I call WAP, i.e. What you do, What you are Able to do and What is your Passion? (What do, Able to do, Passion to do). The system works in very simple manner. Take an A4 page and put the questions as following.

Now try to fill the Current Situation Column. This might be not what  you wanted but you are following or you had to follow. Later fill the column Wish Situation and note the difference. Please share if you had same answers for both, little different or too different.

In my next blog I would be discussing how this tool can be used to make your life easier and for switching to the condition where you are doing with ability what you have the passion for.

Shortcut to Success!

Human beings try to seek shortcuts to reach their goals. All other animals rarely show this behaviour. They in general follow a certain path whether it results in a win or a loss. Human beings on the other hand diverted from this instinct and with time developed a thirst for shortcuts.

Especially after the industrial revolution the pulleys started to move much faster. With advancements in digital age this speed became enormous. Great success of few (hundred) people convinced almost whole human race that shortcut to success exists. In fact cases of few can not be generalized for all. In spite of this people and young people of course started to believe that there exist shortcuts. 

Some of these few successfull people  started to convince others by selling idea of quick success and of course with little work. This worked amazingly for them only. People were hungry about the recipe to achieve quick success and they cashed the idea. It should not be forgotten that people who may even get some quick success rarely leave an imprint on human history.

Looking back in to history, all those who really left their mark paved their way very carefully through continuos hard work and steady accumulation. In his speech at Stanford in year 2005, Steve Jobes mentioned about a fact that one can connect dots only by looking back. It emphasize the need of collection of tools which might seem irrelevant at a certain time but later in future prove to be of great use. 

In order to gain the real success I foresee two important ingredients. Accumulation of skills and their use when required. Accumulation of skills and continuous work towards improvement provides the necessary tools to human beings for shaping the future.  Equally important is the use of these accumulated tools at the right time. Combination of these two factors lead to success and no other shortcut.

Is Luck Hereditary?

Today morning my very same friend came up with the idea that luck is hereditary. I can understand that he reached this conclusion based upon what he sees around himself. He must have noticed the offsprings of rich people enjoying life and living at a standard much above 99% of the remaining population. However I once again felt that I should disagree based upon two major issues.

The first one was what the history, the real history excluding last two hundred years shows us. Starting from three great prophets who changed the world forever, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad one can see that none of them was born lucky. Moses, raised at enemy's home under threat, Jesus born to a lone mother who was not among the lucky ones and Muhammad who was born 6 months after death of his father. But all these great people changed human civilization for ever although with the help of divine force. Does it mean that divine force acts irrespective of your birth status? Then came other great people in history, the scientists, inventors, writers and founders of great countries, none was born lucky. 

Second issue is how you define luck. Is it something related to financial gain, fame or just doing something that matters? For me it is the very last one. However people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have shown that all three are possible without being born lucky. Luck starts to work on your side once you start to focus on something. The best way to become lucky is to decide 'what you do'. 

Secret was a great hit both in printing press and screen. It basically revolved around the concept of faith and wish. In simple words you have to be very careful about  what you wish to achieve and then you must have faith, that it is worth struggling and achieving. Great teachers of our times like Jack Cranfield or Bob Proctor started their lives from scratch but once they decided what they wanted to do, the path was clear.

One of the greatest teacher of Secret was great philosopher of last century, Sir. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal. He believed that even fate can be changed through self esteem. I'll be sharing  his teachings in coming blogs.