People

Socrates, Plato, Ben Franklin all had one thing in common. They all mentioned the importance of people around us.

People foster the growth of a commune, a society or an organization.

The interpersonal relationship trumps over organizational or project affiliation.

Screaming over Twitter about the hiring problem and employee attrition will not help. Finding the real cause, empowering them and understanding their needs will.

Why do your employees have to work 50 hours a week? It is your fault that you committed wrong timelines with your investor or customers.

Don’t expect honesty from your friends If you are letting others talk bad about them in their absence.

Why do you expect your partner to be loyal to you if you are flirting with your receptionist or hooking up on Tinder?

Being honest and empathetic helps in connecting with people. This relationship goes beyond the diaspora of caste, color, religion, region or country.

Ray Dalio in his book Principle talks about:
* Radical Transparency
* Radical Honesty

I am 100% with him on this.

Affiliations

Man is a social animal.
― Aristotle

Humans have common constituent: blood, bones, meat, gut, brain, and trillions of micro-organisms. But we are all different. What we like, what are our virtues and vice.

As humanity progressed so did our afflictions.
* Neanderthal to Homosapeiens.
* Germanic to Celtics.
* Native to barbarians.
* Native Indians to intruders

We started building these ghettos among our-self. Coming to 2018, this has evolved.
* Feminist to anti-feminist
* Ruby dev to Python-dev
* Keto to Palio
* Vegetarian to Non-vegetarian
* Middle class to elites
* Urban to rural

My brain can’t think of beyond this. These affiliations of ours are resulting in limited thinking. We are living in a closed garden or wall. We are gloating over our success without keeping a worldview or bigger picture. We are closer yet more divided.

Socrates in his discourse mentioned about self-knowledge and freedom.

Source: http://www.stoicdoodler.com/affiliations/

 

The power of habit

I was reading deep work (blog link) and the power of habit for some time.

The book narrates the importance of our habit in our life and self-development.

In short, the cycle of cue, routine and reward results in habit formation. We get engulfed to our habit and end up practicing it without any cognitive overload.

If you are a regular rider, you don’t need a checklist before your side. Your brain knows it.

The habit formation process:

Source: http://www.stoicdoodler.com/habit/

Cue (notification) + Routine (notification making you visit the app) + Reward (likes, comments, compliments) = Habit (App addiction)

The book accounts habit related studies on :
* Americas civil rights movement
* Addiction to gambling
* Quotes of philosophers: Aristotle and Hume.

The more and more I read this kind of books, I realize they have a recipe for success.

Source: http://www.stoicdoodler.com/best-seller/

I will be reading “appendix” now on instead finishing the entire book. Is it mandatory to write 300 pages book? Should we blame publishers for this habit?

Socrates Qualities

I am not literate enough to talk about Socrates. While going through my notebook, I found these written notes. These are a few of his qualities.

I don’t remember from which book I got them, just for future reference I am adding it as a blog note.

Socrates qualities :

1. Freedom (as opposed to slavishness) as a result of self-discipline.
2. Certain knowledge and some degree of education.
3. The ability to make friends and get on with people.
4. The ability to do good to friends ( and harm to enemies)

Rational

What happens if everyone becomes rational?
We will turn Vulcan (star trek) and will have to deal fewer errands.

What will happen to our emotions, feelings et all?
We will become robots.

That will save Earth?
Who knows, it might. We will start using our consciousness. We will become unbiased. Emotions will have no role in decision making.

But what will happen to the division we have created?
Rationality will not fuel division. Since we will have no meaning or importance on attachment or emotions. We all will be two-legged walking animals.

Deep work

Reading “Deep Work” made me realize I am wasting my precious time.
We are wasting time in the hyper-connected app-driven world. It is making us less productive.

The author recommends allocating time in chunks for Deep Work. Productivity and deep work are proportional. He gives his example in practicing deep work and being super productive. How well he managed to multitask and taught, wrote research papers and many books.

The author is not saying something out of the box. We all know the side effects of smartphones. It is no different than a slot machine.

In book “Hooked”, Nir Eyal talks about addictive mobile applications.

B.F Skinner experimented on Pigeons what he calls variable rewards. That is what drives us to mobile applications.

Ivan Pavlov did a similar experiment on dogs in his work of classical conditioning.

We are like pigeons and dogs when it comes to instant gratification or habit formation.

Deep Work cites research papers, personal experience, and quotes.

Do we need 250+ page book to understand Deep Work? I doubt it.

Does it deserves to be a best seller? I have no clue.

Socrates told us about self-knowledge. He asked Athenians to throw all the books.

We have to be more aware of time use. One can do that by becoming self-conscious.

Limited

Something is wrong with me?

My social circle has shrunk. The meetups, events, and gatherings have reduced. My consumption and interaction with the virtual world are also limited.

I have started to live most of my time with myself.

Self-introspection gave some answers:

  • Participating in subjects I have control over will make me saner.
  • My bias should not hinder the relationship.
  • Socializing loads the brain as well as the stomach.

People who need me will find me.

Silence

I have been a non-stop talker. My friends close to me are aware of this. I am working on getting this fixed.

I have realized silence and listening to others is more relaxing. It keeps brain saner.

Listening to others helps in keeping a check on biases. It powers independent thinking.

Let see how many days It will take to achieve these virtues.

Problems

Fighting with barista for making frothy cappuccino is easy.

What is difficult: having some empathy. Keeping calm and registering complaint.

Our problems are prime and the world or people around us should resonate with it. We have the least clue or concern about others.

  • Why would it matter if my apartments security guard has been skipping lunch to send money back home?
  • My maid’s daughter is getting married at a young age. She will pay less dowry.

Why the hell should it matter anyway, my Amazon delivery has not reached on time. I need to shout at these morons.