RK's Musings

The Razor’s Edge : Summary

 

It has been a long time since I have read any fiction book. So, thought of reading one, on this weekend to take a break from stats, programming and the usual routine. It took me about 9 hours to read the entire book and I must say that there was not a single instance during those 9 hours that I felt like taking a break. So, the book has a smooth flow of prose with just enough characters that you don't lose the story or get bored anywhere. The plot has about 15 characters , including one played by the author himself, Somerset Maugham but not all 15 characters get the same footage(obviously) .The protagonist of the story is Laurence Larry Darrell who goes on a spiritual quest and the book tries to weave a story around that quest. The other 13 characters come and go in with varying periodicity through out the book. Besides Larry, the main characters in the story are Isabel who loves Larry but ends up marrying Gray Maturin, Elliott Templeton, Isabel's uncle whose sole purpose in life is to socialize and be at parties, Sophie MacDonald, a poetess turned whore turned dope addict, whom Larry almost ends up getting married, but thanks to a Isabel's devious plan, never does so.

The story starts off with Larry being engaged to Isabel. After a stint in the army, Larry is a changed man. He wants to understand about God, Evil, role of knowledge in salvation and whole lot of things that any spiritually inclined person would seek. The difference though is that many of us, answer or seek answers to these questions, while keeping a day job, holding the responsibilities of a spouse, a parent etc. Not Larry. He has no intention to work and he tries to argue with Isabel, that in his meager income they can live a decent life. Despite Isabel deeply in love with Larry, she rejects him. I guess for some people, economic considerations weigh far more than matters of the heart, when it comes to settling down with somebody. Isabel gets married to a business magnet,Gray Maturin. Larry then goes on a quest that takes him to Germany, Spain and India. He finally gets some clarity after staying in India at an Ashram for a few years and meeting some spiritually inclined people in India.

The book does have a dose of aspects from Hinduism like karma, renunciation, rebirth, etc. But the author makes it clear that he never intends of summarizing or even talking at length about such aspects in his book. He is clear about his role, i.e a storyteller. I must say he has played his role as a character and as an author with perfection , as he make spiritual elements, the various locations , a dozen characters as props to show the conversion of an atheist Larry to a devout spiritual person by the end of the book. No wonder this book is rated as one of the finest works of Somerset Maugham. However the movie adaption met with a commercial failure.

Some quotes / conversation that I found interesting amongst the various characters in the novel are :

• I have been reading Spinoza the last month or two. It fills me with exultation. It's like landing from your plane on a great plateau in the mountains. Solitude, and an air so pure that it goes to your head like wine and you feel like million dollars
  
• What are you do going to do with all this unnecessary knowledge which you call wisdom ? It I ever acquire wisdom I suppose I shall be wise enough to know what to do with it
  
• I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of spirit is and how rich in experience. It's illimitable. It's such a happy life. There's only one thing like it, when you are up in a plane by yourself, high, high and only infinity surrounds you.You are intoxicated by the boundless space. You feel such a sense of exhilaration that you wouldn't exchange it for all the power and glory in the world.
  
• Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy
  
• What's the good of knowledge if you are not going to do anything with it ? Perhaps it will be sufficient satisfaction merely to know, as it's a sufficient satisfaction to an artist to product a work of art. And perhaps its only a step towards something further
  
• Love isn't a good sailor and it languishes on a sea voyage. You will be surprised when you have the Atlantic between you and Larry to find how slight the pang is that before you sailed seemed intolerable
• Most people when they are in love invent every kind of reason to persuade themselves that its only sensible to do what they want. I suppose that's why there are so many disastrous marriages
  
• I had not the heart to laugh at Elliott any more, he seemed to me a profoundly pathetic object. Society was what he lived for, a party was the breath of his nostrils, not to be asked to one was an affront, to be alone was a mortification; and, an old man now, he was desperately afraid. It made me sad to think how silly, useless and trivial his life had been. It mattered very little now that he had gone to so many parties and had hobnobbed with all those princes, dukes, and counts. They have forgotten him already.
  
• Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose
  
• Advaita doesn't ask you to take anything on trust; it asks only that you should have a passionate craving to know Reality. It states that you can experience God as surely as you can experience joy or pain.
  
• In later ages the sages of India in recognition of human infirmity admitted that salvation may be won by the way of love and the way of works, but they never denied that the noblest way, though the hardest, is the way of knowledge, for its instrument is the most precious faculty of man, his reason
  
• We are all greater than we know and the wisdom is the means to freedom. For Salvation, it is not essential to retire from the world , but only renounce the self. Work done with no selfish interest purifies the mind and that duties are opportunities afforded to man to sink his separate self and become one with the universal self.

Listening below the noise : Summary

Yesterday was a rather unpleasant day for me. Whenever I am in a bad mood / I become restless I pick up this book by Anne D LeClaire, titled, “ Listening below the noise”. For some reason this book has been my best companion over the past few years. I reread parts of this book from time to time. This time around, I thought I should blog about this and write a few words about the book.

The author starts off by saying, “Like too many of us, I mistook a busy life to a rich one”, and cites her mid-life emptiness as one of the reasons for exploring “silence”. While strolling on the Cape Cod Beach on a warm afternoon in January 1992, she suddenly realizes that “silence” is the missing element in her life and decides to consciously inculcate it in her daily life. She then begins, as a whim, a unique ritual, i.e, maintaining a day of complete silence every other Monday.

Entry :

On the first day of silence, she realizes that her energy levels and productivity levels are far better than a normal day. She begins to wonder whether turning away from outside world is the first step to nourishing the inner world that is so very vibrant in every one of us. The first thing she realizes that silence and mindfulness reduces the habit of multi-tasking things in life. When we are doing something, i.e mindfully doing something, we cannot multi-task. Silence makes one realize that single-tasking is the way to do any work and is a far better and a peaceful alternative to multi-tasking. Is silence necessary for creativity? The author’s first brush with silence makes her feel that silence/solitude is probably a necessary condition to do creative work. In Silence, Our minds are more tuned to the creative energy that lies within us.

Staying in complete silence is not an easy practice, as everyone would agree. The author reflects on one such day when she has an immense urge towards breaking her “silence” tradition. She reveals one of her tricks, i.e, strike a bargain with oneself that it would be only a couple of hours of silence instead of maintaining one full day of silence. This little trick  sometimes becomes useful in centering her. However these bargains are only helpful for a temporary period of time. The quieter we become, the more we hear. What we hear might be unpleasant at times and hence there is a tendency to fill up the silence with noise, i.e songs/TV/Soap-opera/movies/empty chatter. On some level, we are afraid of what we will hear.

When we are in silence, there is one thing we definitely become aware, at least most of us I guess. There is a muddy messy space our inner garbage heap where we toss scraps too painful to consider or confront, the loss, pain, grief and disappointment that are all too real. When we weed out extraneous stimulation and let go of the reins of control, these things claim our attention. And it is silence that allows us the space and stillness in which to think about our motives, to examine our behavior, to see where we’ve fallen short. It is only when we drag our smallest, shabbiest parts into the light that we can move toward becoming whole. We are massively afraid of dealing with this compost. So, in that sense this is the reason we fill our lives with distractions so that we don’t get to meet this compost. However the wise thing to do is to actually confront this compost, to turn it over. For within the same mounds lies the fertile matter out of which new life arises and is nourished.

Cultivation :

It is also sometimes necessary to create boundaries in life for silence to walk in to our lives. May be cutting down on TV/ avoiding the idle chatter with someone, consciously weeding out distractions, etc are bare minimum steps that one must take for the silence to make presence in our lives. There is no guarantee that these restrictions on external stimulation would help one to remain silent as there is sometimes that internal chatter that drives away the silence ruthlessly.

Silence is Janus-faced. Like the Roman god Janus, silence holds two faces. To be silenced is not at all the same as choosing not to speak.A chasm lies between the two, as wide as that between fasting for a purpose and starvation. To be silenced is crippling, belittling, constricting, disempowering. Chosen stillness can be healing, expansive, instructive.

Let’s say you decide to have one day of complete silence. What if others in your family pick up a fight for some trivial reason ? The fact that you have chosen not to respond might fill you up with more resentment as you cannot vent out feelings. So , is the silence painful in such situations ? Well, not necessarily says the author narrating one such incident when silence helped in not messing up a situation and thus was invaluable in providing time and space to defuse a situation.

Silence enhances listening ability, i.e, listening to things that are left unsaid. Bird-watchers, Naturalists typically develop a keen sense of listening. One colleague of mine is so excited whenever he sees tigers/butterflies/birds etc. whenever he goes for a Jungle safari. To observe/spot/infer the kind of bird/butterfly, it demands a sense of stillness from a person. Unless you are fully present in the NOW and develop a keen ear, going on a Jungle safari is practically useless. Ability to remain Silent is a great skillset to have in such activities. Similarly even in our daily lives unless we are silent we cannot truly listen to others. We are merely talking and waiting to talk. We engage in chatter, not conversation, and our chatter reveals our egos’ needs: Love me, admire me, envy me, fear me, help me, see me. There is little space for truly hearing others. Silence in that sense enables true conversations to take place.

Fertilization :

Silence is the first essential for most of the creative endeavors. Even a creative act like choreography might need the choreographer to visualize the steps in silence and then make his/her troupe follow those steps. Personally I find silence very stimulating , be it for programming something, be it for writing a blog post , be it for practicing music. The attention we can give to work, complete and undistracted concentration does enable us to bring the best with in all of us. Like the solitary spider who busily weaves her web in perfect silence, we need to be alone and quiet for our subconscious to spin its creations. Stillness focuses the brain. And like the tensile strength of the spider’s strands, it buttresses and strengthens creativity. Another beneficial aspect of silence is it produces marked improvement in physical and psychological health. At what age, do we develop a low tolerance for quiet time? When do we begin to call it boredom? When do we begin the excessive yearning for entertainment and diversions? The prospect of loneliness can make us fear solitude and silence. The paradox is that those are the very measures that can heal us. The author concludes this section by pondering over her experiences of remaining silent for an entire week.

Harvest :

After 9 years of practicing this ritual, the author develops sudden resistance to this ritual. She has this intense urge to put an end to this ritual but finally bargains another 2 months with herself. During these two months, she reflects on the benefits of silence through the years . She also remembers her yoga teacher’s words:

Sometimes we go through a time  that looks like a setback but in reality that time is a place of preparation. A resting space. A gathering of energy. Like an archer pulling back the bowstring so the arrow can shoot forward.

She also realizes another benefit that silence bestows on people who practice it, i.e, the inner strength that it provides.Trees growing in a forest are fundamentally weaker and less able to weather wind and storms than ones that stand alone, because the solitary trees, without the shelter provided by the others, develop stronger, deeper roots. After two months of the bargain period, the author realizes that silent-day experiences have helped her develop a  spiritual way of living and is no longer a mere ritual. So ,she decides to continue the practice(till date).

Sowing :

In the final section of the book, the author provides a few ways to incorporate silence in to our daily lives.

I have read this book at least half a dozen times till now and every time it has made me appreciative of the importance of silence and solitude in one’s life. Sometimes when I am restless, I just pick up this book and read a random paragraph. The writing is so beautiful that it brings my restless mind to calmness and allows me to focus on my work.

Murakami’s schedule

Via NYT( The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami)

Murakami sold his jazz club in order to devote himself, full time, to writing.

“Full time,” for Murakami, means something different from what it does for most people. For 30 years now, he has lived a monkishly regimented life, each facet of which has been precisely engineered to help him produce his work. He runs or swims long distances almost every day, eats a healthful diet, goes to bed around 9 p.m. and wakes up, without an alarm, around 4 a.m. — at which point he goes straight to his desk for five to six hours of concentrated writing. (Sometimes he wakes up as early as 2.) He thinks of his office, he told me, as a place of confinement — “but voluntary confinement, happy confinement.”

“Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life,” he said. “If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy. I’m not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years. I don’t get bored. I’m kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I’m always hot.”

That daily boiling has produced, over time, one of the world’s most distinctive bodies of work: three decades of addictive weirdness that falls into an oddly fascinating hole between genres (sci-fi, fantasy, realist, hard-boiled) and cultures (Japan, America), a hole that no writer has ever explored before, or at least nowhere near this deep.

Models Behaving Badly : Summary

Emanuel Derman’s book, “Models.Behaving.Badly”, gives a physicist and quant’s perspective of models Vs theories, their nature, what to expect of them, how to differentiate between them and how to cope with their inadequacies. Derman starts off by citing a few incidents from his childhood in Africa, where political models, social movement models failed badly. He then talks about the need to understand the crucial difference between theories and models, thus providing the necessary motivation for a reader to go over the book. The book is not as much as describing the precise faulty nature of all the financial models, which would be quite a stretch that it would not fit in a single book. The book is more about the kind of basic things that a financial modeler must always keep in mind and remain humble in his pursuit, always remembering that his model will always say “what something is like?”. It will never be able to answer “what something is”. Let me summarize the main chapters of this book.

Metaphors, Models and Theories

In this chapter, Derman makes the distinction between “theory” and “model”. He starts off by quoting Arthur Schopenhauer’s metaphor about sleep.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at the death; and the higher the rate of interest and more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

In essence, this metaphor is saying that Life is temporary nonblackness. At birth you receive a loan, consciousness and light borrowed from the void, leaving a hole in the emptiness. The hole will grow bigger each day. Nightly, by yielding temporarily to the darkness of sleep, you restore some of the emptiness and keep the hole from growing limitlessly.

What is the relevance of metaphors in a book that aims to talk about models? Well, the connection is this: A language is nothing but a tower of metaphors, each “higher” one resting on a “lower” one and all of them resting on non-metaphorical words and concepts. Metaphors by default say that X is something like Y. This is similar to a Model that tells us “what something is like”. Derman then cites Dirac, who came up with a similar metaphor in physics where he pictured positron, as a brief fluctuation in the vacuum. However what grounds Dirac’s work is the Dirac’s equation. This fundamental equation when combined with the metaphor successfully predicted the existence of a particle no one had seen before. Metaphor by itself seldom qualifies as a theory.

Why do we need Models at all? Because the world is filled with quasi-regularities that hint at deeper causes. We need models to explain what we see and to predict what will occur. So, the important thing to note is that Models are a kind of proxy to the deeper causes. Whatever be the model, i.e. a Model T from Ford, a fashion Models, an artists’ Models, a weather Model, an economic Models, Black-Scholes Model; they are all a proxy to the real world which is too complex for us to understand. A model thus is a metaphor of limited applicability, not the thing itself. A model is a caricature that overemphasizes some features at the expense of others. The world is impossible to grasp in it’s entirely. We focus on only a small part of its vast confusion and here is where models come in, They reduce the number of dimensions and allow us to make a little extrapolation in that proxy world.

What is a theory?
Weather model’s equations are a model, but Dirac equation is a theory. Similarly you build an econometric model for interest rate prediction, the equations are a model, but the Newton’s equation is a theory. What’s the difference? Derman goes on to give a nice explanation to explain this difference.

Models are analogies; they always describe one thing relative to something else. Models need a defense or an explanation. Theories, in contrast are the real thing. They need confirmation than explanation. A theory describes essence. A successful theory becomes a fact. So, basically what he saying is “Dirac equation IS the electron”, “Maxwell’s’ equations ARE electricity and magnetism”. A theory becomes virtually indistinguishable from the object itself. This is not the case with Models. By default, there is always a gap between models and real thing. A Theory is deep, A Model is shallow. A Theory doesn’t simplify. It observes the world and tries to describe the principles by which the world operates. A theory can be right or wrong but it is characterized by its intent: the discovery of essence. You can layer metaphors on the top of the equations of a theory but the equation is the essence.

The chapter ends with Derman narrating his experience with the doctors. About 25 years ago, Derman went through a retina surgery and since then a peculiar problem haunts him, Monocular Diplopia (seeing double in one eye). This problem keeps recurring at random times. In 2008 he gets an acute problem in his eye and visits n number of doctors for a remedy. None of them seem to get a handle on the problem which appears like a problem relating to retina. Finally a technician cracks the problem by looking at the problem by a simple examination of the symptoms and not bringing in too many assumptions about the problem. Derman then says that this expert problem persists in many of us, who do not step back and question the assumptions from time to time. If you ask an active fund manager who has beaten the market for x number of consecutive years, he starts attributing his success to skill rather than luck/ extraneous factors. Similarly if you go and ask a passive fund manager, he might scorn at arbitrageurs, who breathe day-in day-out “the inefficient market hypothesis”. I remember something from Twyla Tharp’s book, “The creative habit”, that goes something like this: one should always consider oneself to be inexperienced in whatever they pursue. Putting X number of years, managing X number of people, executing X number of ideas, doing X number of surgeries etc should never make one feel that he/she is an expert. Because once you think you are expert, you will definitely develop some amount of fear, be it financial/psychological/ social / intellectual/ etc… however Inexperience erases fear.. One must constantly question the assumptions in a model so that one does not risk of becoming an expert in one specific area / specific type of modeling. This also means that if you are P type quant(buy side), it might make sense to develop a Q type quant model(sell side) and vice-versa, the reason being the kind of modeling that happens on the two sides are different and you never know which model might becomes useful in a particular time frame.

The Absolute

Derman talks about the nature of theories by illustrating Baruch Spinoza’s analysis of human emotions. Spinoza theory is similar to Euclid’s geometry. Euclid starts off with a few axioms and develops entire structure of geometry. Spinoza does the same with respect to human emotions. The following diagram summarizes Spinoza’s logical structure behind the theory:

This shows that Spinoza’s theory basically has three primitives, pain, pleasure and desire. There are derivative emotions like pity, cruelty etc.

In one of the blog entries, Derman gives a beautiful summary of the Spinoza theory:

That thing is called free which exists from the necessity of its nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone. But a thing is called necessary, or rather compelled, which is determined by another to exist and to produce an effect in a certain and determinate nature.

Underlyers <==> free. Derivatives <==> compelled. Derivatives suffer passions, Underlyers have actions. Try to be an underlyer, not a derivative

What’s the relevance to the context of the book? Well, as one can see, Spinoza’s theory is not saying “something is like something”. It basically states things and shows the way world IS, or in the case the emotions ARE. Also there is also something that one can learn from Spinoza, the way to extend our inadequate knowledge. Spinoza was of the view that some of the ways to extend our inadequate knowledge was a) via particulars, b) via generalities and c) via intuition. The author gives a set of examples to show that most of breakthrough theories in science occurred via intuition that various scientists had about their inventions. Once intuition was firmly in place, ONLY then the mathematical framework was used to show it to the world.

The Sublime

Derman gives a whirlwind tour of electromagnetism and the importance of Maxwell’s intuition in development of the entire theory. Along the way Derman drives home the point that Maxwell’s equations IS electromagnetism. The theory becomes indistinguishable from the object itself. Derman also mentions about “renormalization” in physics and “recalibration” in quant’s world and says both are completely different though they seem to be connoting the same meaning. In Physics the normal and abnormal are governed by the same laws, whereas in markets the normal is normal only while people behave conventionally. In crisis the behavior of people changes and normal model fails. While Quantum electrodynamics is a genuine theory of reality, financial models are only mediocre metaphors for a part of it.

The Inadequate

This chapter is the core of the book where Derman relegates almost all the financial models to imperfect models and says financial modeling is not the physics of the markets. Like there are theorems in mathematics, laws in physics, one tends to use phrases such as “fundamental theorem of finance” etc, which actually makes no sense. Derman raises a critical question, “How can a field whose focus is the management of money and assets possess a theorem? and physics a field which deals with real life lack a fundamental theorem “.

The basic thing that every financial modeler tries to have a grip on is “value” of a security. Unlike physics where fundamental particle’s value / charge is absolute, there is nothing absolute about the value of a financial security. Value is determined by people and people change their minds. So, it does appear that whatever value that equity-research people, technical analysts, quants come up with, it is all a big fraud.

Derman rips apart the EMM / CAPM model and raises the critical question: Is EMM a theory or a model and concludes that EMM is not a theory, it is not even a good model, it is an ineffectual model. No financial theory can dictate what return an investor should expect in exchange for taking risk that too depends on appetite and varies with time. CAPM is a useful way of thinking about a model world that is quite often far from the world we live in. Derman , on the other hand, does not criticize Black-Scholes model and says that it is the closest to robustness that any model has been in finance.Why? the replication argument says that the risk premium for a stock and risk-free bond should be same as the option, an argument which is robust even though one can debate about the computation of risk premium.

The chapter concludes with a reference to the movie Bedazzled where the protagonist fails to woo the waitress in all the seven scenarios he seeks a wish for. Devil outwits in all the seven scenarios. Derman concludes saying

The difficulty of the hopeful would-be lover is the same difficult we face when specifying the future scenarios in the financial models; as does the devil, markets eventually outwit us. The devil is indeed in the details. Even if the markets are not strictly random, their vagaries are too rich to capture in a few short sentences or equations.

Breaking the cycle

In the final chapter of the book, Derman comes to the rescue of models and says that they are useful in finance because

• Models facilitate interpolation, whatever be its rudimentary form
• Models transform intuition in dollar value( example – implied vol of the option)
• Models are used to rank securities by value

And the right way to use models are by following a few rules like

• Avoid Axiomatization
• Good Models are vulgar in sophisticated way
• Sweep Dirt under the Rug, but Let Users Know about it
• Use imagination
• Think of Models as Gedankenexperiments
• Beware of Idolatry

The book ends with Financial Modeler’s Manifesto, an ethical declaration for scientists applying their skills to finance.

The Modeler’s Hippocratic Oath

• I will remember that I didn't make the world, and it doesn't satisfy my equations.
• Though I will use models boldly to estimate value, I will not be overly impressed by mathematics.
• I will never sacrifice reality for elegance without explaining why I have done so.
• Nor will I give the people who use my model false comfort about its accuracy. Instead, I will make explicit its assumptions and oversights.
• I understand that my work may have enormous effects on society and the economy, many of them beyond my comprehension.

Takeaway :

This book is a must read for financial modelers as it shows that , whatever model one comes up, it is just a metaphor. If one keeps this in mind while developing models, it is likely that at least the end result will be a vulgar but useable & practical model instead of a mathematically elegant but a totally useless model.

The Practicing Mind : Summary

The author of this book, Thomas M. Sterner, is a Piano technician for a major performing arts center. The author admits that , in his career spanning 25 years, he had faced a lot of challenges to keep himself disciplined and focused (considering the act of tuning and maintaining a piano , an instrument that has 88 notes , is repetitious and tedious by nature). Over a period of time, the author develops a mindset that has kept him productive.Through this book, Sterner tells his method of remaining disciplined.

Process not the Product

In any form of practice, it is important to focus on the process and not on the product. There are umpteen variations of this statement that one gets to hear.The author does acknowledge this fact but goes on to add his own flavor to this statement. He uses music as an example to show that focusing on the process takes care of the product , but not vice-versa. He says

Keep yourself process-oriented. Stay in the present. Make the process the goal and use the overall goal as a rudder to steer you efforts. Be deliberate, have an intention about what you want to accomplish, and be aware of that intention. Doing these things will eliminate the judgments and emotions that come from a product-oriented or results-oriented mind.

It’s How You Look At It

The author gives a beautiful analogy of a flower to shift one’s perspective towards everything in life. He says

Ask yourself: at what point in a flower's life, from seed to full bloom, has it reached perfection? Let's look at this right now and see what nature is teaching us every day as we walk past the flowers in our garden. At what point is a flower perfect? Is it when it is nothing more than a seed in your hand waiting to be planted? All that it will ever be is there in that moment. Is it when it first starts to germinate unseen under several inches of the soil? This is when it displays the first visible signs of the miracle we call creation. How about when it first pokes its head through the surface and sees the face of the sun for the first time? All of its energies have gone into reaching for this source of life; until this point, it has had nothing more than an inner voice telling it which way to grow to find it. What about when it begins to flower? This is when its own individual properties start to be seen. The shape of the leaves, the number of blooms are all unique to just this one flower, even among the other flowers of the same species. Or is it the stage of full bloom, the crescendo of all of the energy and effort it took to reach this point in its life? Let’s not forget that humble and quiet ending when it returns to the soil from where it came. At what point is the flower perfect? I hope you already know that the answer is that it is always perfect.

Using this example, the author suggests that by following present-minded approach , one can experience a tremendous relief from the fictitious, self-imposed pressures and expectations that only slow one’s progress.

Perception Changes Create Patience

Patience is probably at the top of everyone’s list  of most sought-after virtues. One of the reasons that we become impatient is we step out of the NOW  There is a saying that states that most of what we worry about never comes to pass. Thinking about a situation before you are in it only scatters your energy. The first step toward patience is to become aware of when your internal dialog is running wild and dragging you with it. If you are not aware of this when it is happening, which is probably most of the time, you are not in control. The second part is understanding and accepting that there is no such thing as reaching a point of perfection in anything. True perfection is both always evolving and at the same time always present within you, just like the flower.

Progress is a natural result of staying focused on the process of doing anything. When you stay on purpose, focused in the present moment, the goal comes to you with frictionless ease. However, when you constantly focus on the goal you are aiming for, you push it away instead of pulling it toward you. In every moment of your struggle, by looking at the goal and constantly referencing your position to it, you are affirming to yourself that you haven’t reached it. You only need to acknowledge the goal to yourself occasionally, using it as a rudder to keep you moving in the right direction.

Suppose you are trying to learn how to play a piece of music and you come from this new perspective. Your experience will be totally different than what we usually think of in terms of learning to play a musical instrument. In the old way, you are sure that you are not going to be happy or “successful” until you can play the piece of music flawlessly. Every wrong note you hit, every moment you spend struggling with the piece, is an affirmation that you have not reached your goal. If, however, your goal is learning to play the piece of music, then the feeling of struggle dissolves away. With each moment you spend putting effort into learning the piece, you are achieving your goal. An incorrect note is just part of learning how to play the correct note; it is not a judgment of your playing ability. In each moment you spend with the instrument, you are learning information and gaining energy that will work for you in other pieces of music. Your comprehension of music and the experience of learning it are expanding. All of this is happening with no sense of frustration or impatience. What more could you ask for from just a shift in perspective?

Four S words - Simplify, Small, Short and Slow

The author shows the interconnectedness between these words and the way these 4 words can be used to structure any work, be it following a fitness regimen / coding an algo / playing an instrument / cleaning up the house etc. Any task that is overwhelming at the first sight, might put us off and sometimes we tend to permanently shelve it. But once we simplify the goal, divide this simplified goal in small sections, do these sections in short durations at a slow pace, paradoxically , we get far more things done efficiently. This might sound all very obvious, but then it is relevant to ask oneself a question, “ When was the last time you did all the four things – Simplified a project, Took a small section, worked on it for a short time and more importantly slowly ? “ More than any other place, I can relate this to music. You can’t master a raaga without the 4 components mentioned. You have to simplify the goal of a 1.5 hr typical rendition of a raaga, Divide in to small sections ,Practice on one of the the small sections in a short interval , lets say 45 min, and more importantly practice it slowly. “ My Sitar guru was mentioning the other day about “Budhaditya Mukherjee”, a Sitar Maestro. In an interview, when asked about his practice regimen, he replied that he practiced 3 hrs in the morning and 3 hrs in the evening and more importantly , he does it EVERY SINGLE DAY. Unlike Ravi Shankar’s of the world who quote that they practice 15 hrs – 20 hrs a day, which seems to be practically impossible for a human being, Budhaditya Mukherjee’s ritual sounds more pragmatic and realistic. In the same interview, he also mentions that a combination of Simplify + Small + Short and Slow are quintessential to master a raaga.

Equanimity and DOC

Calmness and even-tempered are the words that go along with equanimity. These are the characteristics that are desirable when we are working on something. However there is an evil beast called “Judgement” that sometimes jumps upon us.Judgment is inevitable in our lives,  but it becomes pathological when we overdo it. Most of times we overdo it. We judge everything in life and most of it unconsciously. We imagine hypothetical scenarios and think about the possible outcomes and possible judgments that we would make / others would make in such scenarios. Its like running simulations to create parallel worlds and checking the parameter values. It is good in statistics as alternate worlds gives confidence intervals on parameters. It is detrimental when we are working on something as it robs us from the NOW. It happens to all of us. We are doing something, be it running/ reading / programming/ playing an instrument etc. Instead of just being in the present, we start judging it. We are thinking of the next activity that needs to be done / we think of some odd conversation with someone/ we imagine hypothetical situations etc. We try to engage ourselves unconsciously in things that have nothing to do with what we are CURRENTLY doing. The judgement gives rise to  emotions and they stem from a sense that “this is right and that is wrong” or “this is good and that is bad.” Right and good make us happy while bad and wrong make us upset or sad. We feel that right and good are at least approaching “ideal,” while wrong and bad are moving away from it. We all want to be happy and have an ideal life, but what constitutes right and wrong is neither universal nor constant. The evaluations and judgments we make unconsciously in every second of our lives jump-start our emotions and bring us so much anxiety and stress.What can be done about it ? Doing work with out judgement part is far more effective as the execution of the task would be that much more clinical.

The author suggests “meditation” as a means to get out of this ever-judgmental mode of mind. He also offers another adjunct method,which he calls “ DOC – Do + Observe + Correct”. He gives anecdotes and experiences from his work as a Piano technician that bring out the importance of DOC to perform tasks efficiently. Using DOC repetitively for most of the tasks that we do in our daily lives, it is possible to remove judgement that clouds our thinking and execution. The C in the DOC refers more to evaluation and not judgment. Evaluation comes before the action of passing judgement. After evaluation, you skip the judgement part and then go over DOC cycle, as judgment has no value in DOC mindset.

Teach and Learn from Children

Time perception is an integral part of the difference between adults and children. In general, Children don’t seem to have a sense of where they are going in life. There is today and that’s it. They live in the present moment, but not really by their own choice; it’s just how they are. So, making them do any activity like learning to play an instrument /  work on something which takes time and effort to master, is difficult as they don’t see a point in doing it. There is no instant gratification in learning math / learning an instrument. It is usually an activity which will involve a lot of struggle/failures etc. So,there is a paradox here. What’s frustrating as an adult, with regard to teaching them to stay in the present when they are engaged in something that requires perseverance, is that they can’t see the point. Why work at something that requires a long-term commitment, a perception of time outside the present moment? Children are always in the NOW and adults find it difficult to be in the NOW. Is there something that Parents and Children can learn and teach each other ? The author shares his experiences in dealing with her two daughters in this context.

Takeaway:

A Piano technician’s job from the outside looks repetitive. This book provides a different perspective of the work and in doing so, provides valuable guidance for deliberate practice. 

UNTITLED : Summary

This book is a poor imitation of Steven Pressfield’s book , “Do the work”.The author is a professional actor who seemed to have settled in to some creative director gig at a Church. The book is called “Untitled” and metaphorically refers to the blank page that faces any person at the beginning of a project, be it writing an article/book/painting/creating a biz etc. Everyone has to start with a blank page. In an writer’s life though, every novel and every little story of the novel begins with a blank page and he/she must fill in characters , narrative as he goes along. In that sense, “blank page“ is a demon that a writer needs to fight every day. 

This book is collection of cliché’s , quotes picked up from various philosophers/authors/books etc.  Except using iTunes library as a Launchpad for creative writing that the author mentions, the book has nothing really original. Through out the book, the author harps on one point that ideation , execution , is plain old hard work and there is no magic bullet.  The author being a creative director and an actor himself, should have at least been a bit creative in writing some original content than merely quoting other people.

Writing Tips

Stumbled on to this piece via 13 Writing Tips- Chuck Palahniuk :

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Twenty years ago, a friend and I walked around downtown Portland at Christmas. The big department stores: Meier and Frank… Fredrick and Nelson… Nordstroms… their big display windows each held a simple, pretty scene: a mannequin wearing clothes or a perfume bottle sitting in fake snow. But the windows at the J.J. Newberry's store, damn, they were crammed with dolls and tinsel and spatulas and screwdriver sets and pillows, vacuum cleaners, plastic hangers, gerbils, silk flowers, candy - you get the point. Each of the hundreds of different objects was priced with a faded circle of red cardboard. And walking past, my friend, Laurie, took a long look and said, "Their window-dressing philosophy must be: 'If the window doesn't look quite right - put more in'."

She said the perfect comment at the perfect moment, and I remember it two decades later because it made me laugh. Those other, pretty display windows… I'm sure they were stylist and tasteful, but I have no real memory of how they looked.

For this essay, my goal is to put more in. To put together a kind-of Christmas stocking of ideas, with the hope that something will be useful. Or like packing the gift boxes for readers, putting in candy and a squirrel and a book and some toys and a necklace, I'm hoping that enough variety will guarantee that something here will occur as completely asinine, but something else might be perfect.

Number One: Two years ago, when I wrote the first of these essays it was about my "egg timer method" of writing. You never saw that essay, but here's the method: When you don't want to write, set an egg timer for one hour (or half hour) and sit down to write until the timer rings. If you still hate writing, you're free in an hour. But usually, by the time that alarm rings, you'll be so involved in your work, enjoying it so much, you'll keep going. Instead of an egg timer, you can put a load of clothes in the washer or dryer and use them to time your work. Alternating the thoughtful task of writing with the mindless work of laundry or dish washing will give you the breaks you need for new ideas and insights to occur. If you don't know what comes next in the story… clean your toilet. Change the bed sheets. For Christ sakes, dust the computer. A better idea will come.

Number Two: Your audience is smarter than you imagine. Don't be afraid to experiment with story forms and time shifts. My personal theory is that younger readers distain most books - not because those readers are dumber than past readers, but because today's reader is smarter. Movies have made us very sophisticated about storytelling. And your audience is much harder to shock than you can ever imagine.

Number Three: Before you sit down to write a scene, mull it over in your mind and know the purpose of that scene. What earlier set-ups will this scene pay off? What will it set up for later scenes? How will this scene further your plot? As you work, drive, exercise, hold only this question in your mind. Take a few notes as you have ideas. And only when you've decided on the bones of the scene - then, sit and write it. Don't go to that boring, dusty computer without something in mind. And don't make your reader slog through a scene in which little or nothing happens.

Number Four: Surprise yourself. If you can bring the story - or let it bring you - to a place that amazes you, then you can surprise your reader. The moment you can see any well-planned surprise, chances are, so will your sophisticated reader.

Number Five: When you get stuck, go back and read your earlier scenes, looking for dropped characters or details that you can resurrect as "buried guns." At the end of writing Fight Club, I had no idea what to do with the office building. But re-reading the first scene, I found the throw-away comment about mixing nitro with paraffin and how it was an iffy method for making plastic explosives. That silly aside (… paraffin has never worked for me…) made the perfect "buried gun" to resurrect at the end and save my storytelling ass.

Number Six: Use writing as your excuse to throw a party each week - even if you call that party a "workshop." Any time you can spend time among other people who value and support writing, that will balance those hours you spend alone, writing. Even if someday you sell your work, no amount of money will compensate you for your time spent alone. So, take your "paycheck" up front, make writing an excuse to be around people. When you reach the end of your life - trust me, you won't look back and savor the moments you spent alone.

Number Seven: Let yourself be with Not Knowing. This bit of advice comes through a hundred famous people, through Tom Spanbauer to me and now, you. The longer you can allow a story to take shape, the better that final shape will be. Don't rush or force the ending of a story or book. All you have to know is the next scene, or the next few scenes. You don't have to know every moment up to the end, in fact, if you do it'll be boring as hell to execute.

Number Eight: If you need more freedom around the story, draft to draft, change the character names. Characters aren't real, and they aren't you. By arbitrarily changing their names, you get the distance you need to really torture a character. Or worse, delete a character, if that's what the story really needs.

Number Nine: There are three types of speech - I don't know if this is TRUE, but I heard it in a seminar and it made sense. The three types are: Descriptive, Instructive, and Expressive. Descriptive: "The sun rose high…" Instructive: "Walk, don't run…" Expressive: "Ouch!" Most fiction writers will only use one - at most, two - of these forms. So use all three. Mix them up. It's how people talk.

Number Ten: Write the book you want to read.

Number Eleven: Get author book jacket photos taken now, while you're young. And get the negatives and copyright on those photos.

Number Twelve: Write about the issues that really upset you. Those are the only things worth writing about. In his course, called "Dangerous Writing," Tom Spanbauer stresses that life is too precious to spend it writing tame, conventional stories to which you have no personal attachment. There are so many things that Tom talked about but that I only half remember: the art of "manumission," which I can't spell, but I understood to mean the care you use in moving a reader through the moments of a story. And "sous conversation," which I took to mean the hidden, buried message within the obvious story. Because I'm not comfortable describing topics I only half-understand, Tom's agreed to write a book about his workshop and the ideas he teaches. The working title is "A Hole In The Heart," and he plans to have a draft ready by June 2006, with a publishing date set in early 2007.

Number Thirteen: Another Christmas window story. Almost every morning, I eat breakfast in the same diner, and this morning a man was painting the windows with Christmas designs. Snowmen. Snowflakes. Bells. Santa Claus. He stood outside on the sidewalk, painting in the freezing cold, his breath steaming, alternating brushes and rollers with different colors of paint. Inside the diner, the customers and servers watched as he layered red and white and blue paint on the outside of the big windows. Behind him the rain changed to snow, falling sideways in the wind.

The painter's hair was all different colors of gray, and his face was slack and wrinkled as the empty ass of his jeans. Between colors, he'd stop to drink something out of a paper cup.

Watching him from inside, eating eggs and toast, somebody said it was sad. This customer said the man was probably a failed artist. It was probably whiskey in the cup. He probably had a studio full of failed paintings and now made his living decorating cheesy restaurant and grocery store windows. Just sad, sad, sad.

This painter guy kept putting up the colors. All the white "snow," first. Then some fields of red and green. Then some black outlines that made the color shapes into Xmas stockings and trees.

A server walked around, pouring coffee for people, and said, "That's so neat. I wish I could do that…"

And whether we envied or pitied this guy in the cold, he kept painting. Adding details and layers of color. And I'm not sure when it happened, but at some moment he wasn't there. The pictures themselves were so rich, they filled the windows so well, the colors so bright, that the painter had left. Whether he was a failure or a hero. He'd disappeared, gone off to wherever, and all we were seeing was his work.

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Fifty Days of Solitude : Summary

It has started raining in Mumbai and the pleasant climate after three months of scorching heat, enlivens the spirit. Will attempt to write a few words about this book.

Since I have been staying alone for the past few years in Mumbai, I have gone back to “Sitar” which I could not practice in NY for a couple of reasons: Firstly, I missed the space needed for practicing any instrument. Staying with two other guys in a flat was not particularly conducive to playing an instrument without distractions. You have to actively seek out “No Distraction time” so that you don’t cause any distraction to others -:) . Well, work + academics + programming left me with little energy to pursue “Sitar”. Secondly, I could not afford a teacher. Self-study / Self-training in any field requires you to be skillful up to a certain level/ be an apprentice for some time, after which you can be in a cruise-control mode in exploring stuff. I wasn’t anywhere close to that stage and a Sitar teacher was imperative to my practice. Some quick calls to a craigslisters revealed that they were too costly for me to even think of regular classes. Thanks to my decision to head back to India, I found two things in my life needed to play any instrument, a certain level of solitude & a teacher. The former, I deliberately opted for (don’t know how long I can be in this state), the latter,”finding a teacher”, happened out of a chance conversation with someone.

I don’t know why I am writing about “Sitar” when I had meant to give a quick summary of this book. May be, I associate solitude with two activities, “Playing Sitar” and “Doing Math/Stats”. I have found that these two activities demand alonetime, atleast for me. I really appreciate people who can do these activities despite the distractions in their lives. In the process I have actually started enjoying solitude. In fact it has become addictive too!(don’t know whether it is harmful or harmless).

Ok coming back to the book; The book has been on my mind since quite some time. It recounts the experiences of Doris Grumbach, an American Novelist , who takes up solitude for 50 days. Well, actually it is a “forced “solitude. The “forced” word here refers to the situation when the author’s companion Sybil , goes away to procure books for her business to another town for an extended period of time.

Instead of filling it with regular distractions, Doris Grumbach decides to embrace solitude and see what that leads to. When asked in a Charlie Rose interview, why she decided to do so, She said, “ I wanted to spend time alone as I had never spent time alone for many decades. Parents, spouse, kids, neighbors, etc put innumerable covers on me and I never had a chance to look at what kind of person I am, once those covers fell off. How many layers that are not me that I have covered up? How much it is in me that can sustain me, without any human contact? . I was seeking answers to some of these questions”.

Cutting off human contact is unthinkable for many. Reminds me of the words of Anne Lindbergh who says in her book “Gift from the sea”:

We seem so frightened today of being alone that we never let it happen. Even if family, friends and movies should fail, there is still the radio or television to fill up the void. Women, who used to complain of loneliness, need never be alone anymore. We can do work with soap-opera heroes at our side. Even day dreaming was more creative than thisl it demanded something of oneself and it fed the inner life

For 50 days, Doris Grumbach cuts off human contact, TV, newspaper to a large extent and explores the experience such a state provides. She restricts herself to books, music, writing and an occasional NPR news diet.

I found something ironic in a way she mentions at the very beginning of the book that knowing that this solitary period was only a temporary phase helped her embrace it . So, does one have to think that “this solitude has a termination date” to make it easy to enjoy it? In fact I think it is contrary to that kind of thinking. A frame of mind that you will be alone for a week(for example), and all the noise and clutter will be back in to your life in a week’s time Vis-à-vis A frame of mind where you are prepared to be face solitude for as long as you please give vastly different experiences. So, may be the author is cheating her mind to get in to this mode where she can make allies with silence and solitude. In the Charlie-Rose interview, she mentions her time alone as “seductive way of living”, the reasoning being that you tend to appreciate art / beauty/ little things much better in solitude.

This content of the book is pretty random and is reminiscent of a person facing solitude for the first time in life( whose thoughts & actions are very often desultory). It takes one some time to settle in to solitude. In the same way, this book made me feel that the author is trying to grapple with the alonetime and trying to find sanity in this situation of “forced solitude”. The book is interspersed with a good collection of reflections that makes this book a worthwhile read. Some of them that I found interesting are:

• Order, Sequence is the secret of being alone
• The true purpose of art is not to create beautiful objects. It is a method of understanding, a way of penetrating the world and finding one’s place in it, and whatever aesthetic qualities an individual canvas might have are almost an incidental by-product of the effort to engage oneself in this struggle, to enter in to the thick of the things
• The reason that extended solitude seemed so hard to endure was not that we missed others but that we began to wonder if we ourselves were present, because for so long our existence depended upon assurances from them.
• Loneliness is the poverty of Self, Solitude is the richness of Self
• In the context of painting : It is only when an object exists in our lives for no other purpose than to be seen that we really look at it
• In what odd places, we must go to find solitude!. A physician, I know told me that he did not mind one whit having an examination known as MRI, a diagnostic procedure most people hate because the patient is encased for so long, lying still in a machine that is almost tomblike. He said it was the only quiet time he had had in a long time, and he was able to think very well in the stillness and silence the examination provided
• I realized how much more I was aware of my vices(envy, gloating, egotism) when I was alone. In the presence of others, it was possible to ignore them , or even deny their existence. In Solitude, they are there, omnipresent and bountiful , unable to be dispelled by the unknowing flattery of kindly others
• I learned that there is softness about being alone in the country, even the frozen, snow-filled country. The city is a multitude of rigid right angles forced down upon each other. But the country, even in the dead of winter , is composed of the circles and arcs and ovals of blessedly unpopulated, almost empty space
• People who cannot bear to be alone are the worst company
• The less one talks, the more one thinks? Is thought internalized speech rising from and then directed back, soundlessly, in to oneself? Talk uses up ideas, although others have told me that they find it profitable to talk out their ideas and plans for a story because it clarifies their intentions. Not I. Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me , dissipated in to the noisy air like smoke, Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in the rich soil of silence do they grow.
• “We live, as we dream – Alone “ – Joseph Conrad

The book ends with the author, a novelist well past her age, finding her creative muse again, and getting back to writing non-fiction.

The Music Room : Summary

The book is a memoir from Namita Devidayal. Belonging to a cosmopolitan family in Mumbai,  Namita narrates a parallel universe that she lives in, i.e the world of Hindustani Classical, which is vastly different from her home environment. This parallel universe is given a metaphorical name,”The Music Room”. Namita is dragged in to the world of music at a young age by her mother to improve her marriage prospects. Namita reluctantly starts taking music lessons from Dhondutai Kulkarni, a musician from Jaipur gharana. This book’s central character is Dhondutai(Yes, the name sounds little odd. Infact the book somewhere mentions that Dhondutai was the only surviving child of a family from Kolhapur and the elders in the family decided to name the child , Dhondu, literally meaning “Stone” in order to cast off evil spirits.)

Namita slowly realizes that her teacher Dhondutai is also living in a parallel universe, very different from the neighbourhood, Kennedy Bridge, which is a shabby locality in Bombay. Dhondutai’s life revolves around music and gods. She remains unmarried throughout her life and is totally devoted to music. Somewhere in the book she also gives a reason for deciding not to marry, “You cannot have two master ; It has to be music or man; Both demand too much from one.” She sees a very close connection between the music and spirituality, weaves her music around gods. Her attitude towards music also makes Namita extremely curious about the world of music. Dhondutai gradually teaches Namita all aspects of music, be it the philosophical, historical, notational, style element etc.

Dhondutai believed that “Once, you forget yourself and the world around you, once you dismiss all the rewards and recognition you could be getting for your art, and sing only as a form of meditation, your music will break free. You also begin to know things that other people don’t know. Truths reveal themselves to you. It comes from living in solitude and meditating only on music.” Her belief made a lot of impact on young Namita.

Dhondutai’s technique of teaching swara and raga was very different from the usual teachers which Namita had learnt earlier from. According to Dhondutai, “ To understand and perform the raga in its true sense requires a life-long meditation on the notes – and on yourself. Merely mastering notes is not enough. You have to reflect on the human condition, on life itself. Every time I sing a raga, it unfolds and expands, revealing new insights and pathways. That’s why they say that a musician really becomes a musician at the end of his life. It is only once you use the notes to tell a greater story that you are floating in a bottomless ocean.” Dhondutai started teaching Namita two integral aspects of Jaipur Gharana , “how to throw voice ?” and “breath control ?”.

Through a series of anecdotes, the book captures the guru-shishya tradition that is essential to Indian classical music. One can’t learn music from books. There has to be a teacher who guides you based on how you sing / play an instrument. I can relate this to Sitar as in you can play the note dha in let’s say Rag Yaman , either on the fret , or you can use a meend , i.e you pull the string at pa to produce dha or you can put an extra effort to pull the string from ma to produce a dha. So, there are tons of ways to make an instrument say dha. But only in the presence of a guru, will you know what to play in what context. Sometimes a flat note sounds better and sometimes mainly in aalaap , meend is the preferred technique. While playing a taan, either of the techniques could be used. So, one needs a guru to actually make you perceive the difference. I think the book says it better

Teaching is an important process as performing, for this is what takes this music in to posterity. The books cannot tell you which raga to start with and how to keep time, why a particular taan is not sounding quite right. There are secrets only a guru can give you selectively, gradually and when the student is ready to receive them

Interwoven in the conversations between Dhondutai and Namita, the book brings out historical aspects of music. It traces three important personalities of Hindustani Music, from whom Dhondutai learnt music from, Ustad Alladiya Khan, Bhurji Khan, Kesarbai Kerkar. 

	Dhondutai  Kulkarni
Ustad Alladiya Khan	Bhurji Khan	Kesarbai Kerkar

Besides tracing the lives of Alladiya Khan and Kesarbai Kerkar, Dhondutai narrates her own learning process, like the instance when Alladiya Khan asks Dhondutai to sing with out Harmonium.

Human nature is such that it always seeks easy options.The Harmonium makes singing easy because you don’t have to work on making independent connections with the notes. By playing it when you sing you will never hit the right note with exactitude because you will have this backup.

The setting of the story is in Mumbai and there are snapshots of various facets of Mumbai life that are captured throughout the book. Life in a local train, the bonds that are formed between passengers/strangers during train rides, the travails of getting in to a local train, the strong Hindutva culture one sees around , cultural clubs etc are peppered throughout the book and make it interesting read.

There is a paragraph in the book that I particularly liked where Namita describes her feeling of going to her music class at Borivali.

Whenever I went back to Dhondutai, I felt I was entering a space that was timeless. Nothing changed. The same black-and-white television set layered with dust; the plastic milk bottle with a spray of fake flowers that I had gotten her years ago; the pictures on the wall of Kesarbai, her parents, Ganesha and Khansahibs; ad her other everlasting companions, the tanpuras. In deference to modern life, she had acquired a refrigerator at some point but even that remained mostly bare.

It was utterly reassuring-like going back to your childhood room many years later, and finding your teddy bear perched exactly where you left it, with its left eye still hanging loose. For me, Dhondutai was like that stuffed toy, unconditionally affectionate and always around. I went back to her and was at peace. We would tune the tanpura and pick up where we had left off

Makes me feel that , may be,  we all need to have our own version of “ The Music Room”, in order to bring semblance and serenity in our ever uncertain lives.

Avoid News!

Via Rolf Dobelli

• News misleads us systematically
• News is irrelevant
• News limits understanding
• News is toxic to your body
• News massively increases cognitive errors
• News inhibits thinking
• News changes the structure of your brain
• News is costly
• News sunders the relationship between reputation and achievement
• News is produced by journalists
• Reported facts are sometimes wrong, forecasts always
• News is manipulative
• News makes us passive
• News gives us the illusion of caring
• News kills creativity

Nature Vs Nurture

Via “ How to be genius ?“ New Scientist ,15 September 2006 - David Dobbs

My mother, rest her merry, brainy soul, convinced me early on that I was - as she liked to put it, quoting the cartoon character Yogi Bear - "SMARRR-ter than the average bear!" I happily assumed that my Yogi-like intelligence would ensure great things. My sense of entitlement grew when I easily won good marks in school, then grew some more when three different college professors told me I had a talent for writing. Rising to the top, I gathered, was a matter of natural buoyancy.

The reality check came in my twenties, when nearly a decade of middling effort failed to cast the glow of my writing genius much beyond my study walls. By my early thirties I saw the obvious: my smarts and "talent" - above average or not - would count for little unless I outworked most of the other writers. Only when I started putting in some extra hours did I get anywhere.

About the time I had my epiphany, a growing field of scholarship was more rigorously reaching the same conclusion. It seems the ability we're so fond of calling talent or even genius arises not from innate gifts but from an interplay of fair (but not extraordinary) natural ability, quality instruction, and a mountain of work. This new discipline - a mix of psychology and cognitive science - has now produced its first large collection of expert reviews, the massive Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.

The book essentially tells us to forget the notion that "genius", "talent" or any other innate qualities create the greats we call geniuses. Instead, as the American inventor Thomas Edison said, genius is 99 per cent perspiration - or, to be truer to the data, perhaps 1 per cent inspiration, 29 per cent good instruction and encouragement, and 70 per cent perspiration. Examine closely even the most extreme examples - Mozart, Newton, Einstein, Stravinsky - and you find more hard-won mastery than gift. Geniuses are made, not born.

Extraordinary efforts

"It's complicated explaining how genius or expertise is created and why it's so rare," says Anders Ericsson, the professor of psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee who edited the handbook. "But it isn't magic, and it isn't born. It happens because some critical things line up so that a person of good intelligence can put in the sustained, focused effort it takes to achieve extraordinary mastery. These people don't necessarily have an especially high IQ, but they almost always have very supportive environments, and they almost always have important mentors. And the one thing they always have is this incredible investment of effort."

This is mixed news, says Ericsson. "It's funny, really. On one hand it's encouraging: it makes me think that even the most ordinary among us should be careful about saying we can't do great things, because people have proven again and again that most people can do something extraordinary if they're willing to put in the exercise. On the other hand, it's a bit overwhelming to look at what these people have to do. They generally invest about five times as much time and effort to become great as an accomplished amateur does to become competent. It's not something everyone's up for."

Studies of extraordinary performance run a wide gamut, employing memory tests, IQ comparisons, brain scans, retrospective interviews of high achievers and longitudinal studies of people who were identified in their youth as highly gifted. None bears out the myth of inherent genius.

Take intelligence. No accepted measure of innate or basic intelligence, whether IQ or other metrics, reliably predicts that a person will develop extraordinary ability. In other words, the IQs of the great would not predict their level of accomplishments, nor would their accomplishments predict their IQs. Studies of chess masters and highly successful artists, scientists and musicians usually find their IQs to be above average, typically in the 115 to 130 range, where some 14 per cent of the population reside - impressive enough, but hardly as rarefied as their achievements and abilities.

The converse - that high IQ does not ensure greatness - holds as well. This was shown in a study of adult graduates of New York City's Hunter College Elementary School, where an admission criterion was an IQ of at least 130 (achieved by a little over 1 per cent of the general population) and the mean IQ was 157 - "genius" territory by any scaling of IQ scores, and a level reached by perhaps 1 in 5000 people. Though the Hunter graduates were successful and reasonably content with their lives, they had not reached the heights of accomplishment, either individually or as a group, that their IQs might have suggested.

In the words of study leader Rena Subotnik, a research psychologist formerly at the City University of New York and now with the American Psychological Association: "There were no superstars, no Pulitzer Prize or MacArthur Award winners, and only one or two familiar names." The genius these elite students showed in their IQs remained on paper.

So what does create genius or extreme talent? Musicians have an old joke about this: How do you get to Carnegie Hall from here? Practise. A sober look at any field shows that the top performers are rarely more gifted than the also-rans, but they almost invariably outwork them. This doesn't mean that some people aren't more athletic or smarter than others. The elite are elite partly because they have some genetic gifts - for learning and hand-eye coordination, for instance - but the very best rise because they take great pains to maximise that gift.

Take Stephen Hawking, who likes to dismiss questions about his IQ by saying, "People who boast about their IQ are losers," and was a middling student and achiever until his mid-twenties. Only then did he catch fire - and begin working obsessively - while collaborating with fellow physicist Roger Penrose on black-hole theory.

Pete Sampras didn't possess more talent than Andre Agassi, but he won 14 grand slams to Agassi's eight because he worked harder and more steadily. And as cellist Yo-Yo Ma once said, the most proficient and renowned musicians are not necessarily those who outshone everyone as youths, but rather those who had "fire in the belly".

Decade of dedication

This has led scholars of elite performance to speak of a 10-year rule: it seems you have to put in at least a decade of focused work to master something and bring greatness within reach. This shows starkly in a 1985 study of 120 elite athletes, performers, artists, biochemists and mathematicians led by University of Chicago psychologist Benjamin Bloom, a giant of the field who died in 1999. Every single person in the study took at least a decade of hard study or practice to achieve international recognition. Olympic swimmers trained for an average of 15 years before making the team; the best concert pianists took 15 years to earn international recognition. Top researchers, sculptors and mathematicians put in similar amounts of time.

The same even goes for those few who seem born with supreme talent. Mozart was playing the violin at 3 years of age and received expert, focused instruction from the start. He was precocious, writing symphonies at age 7, but he didn't produce the work that made him a giant until his teens. The same is true for Tiger Woods. He seems magical on the golf course, but he was swinging a golf club before he could walk, got great instruction and practised constantly from boyhood, and even today outworks all his rivals. His genius has been laboriously constructed.

“Even the genius of Tiger Woods had to be laboriously constructed”

Study so intense requires resources - time and space to work, teachers to mentor - and the subjects of Bloom's study, like most elite performers, almost invariably enjoyed plentiful support in their formative years. Bloom, in fact, came to see great talent as less an individual trait than a creation of environment and encouragement. "We were looking for exceptional kids," he said, "and what we found were exceptional conditions." He was intrigued to find that few of the study's subjects had shown special promise when they first took up the fields they later excelled in, and most harboured no early ambition for stellar achievement. Rather, they were encouraged as children in a general way to explore and learn, then supported in more focused ways as they began to develop an area they particularly liked. Another retrospective study, of leading scientists, similarly found that most came from homes where learning was revered for its own sake.

Finally, most retrospective studies, including Bloom's, have found that almost all high achievers were blessed with at least one crucial mentor as they neared maturity. When Subotnik looked at music students at New York's elite Juilliard School and winners of the high-school-level Westinghouse Science Talent Search, he found that the Juilliard students generally realised their potential more fully because they had one-on-one relationships with mentors who prepared them for the challenges they would face after their studies ended. Most of the Westinghouse winners, on the other hand, went on to colleges where they failed to find mentors to nurture their talent and guide them through rough spots. Only half ended up pursuing science, and few of them with distinction.

So what do elite performers attain through all that deliberate practice and sensitive mentoring? What makes a genius? The crème de la crème appear to develop several important cognitive skills. The first, called "chunking", is the ability to group details and concepts into easily remembered patterns. Chess provides the classic illustration. Show a chess master a game in progress for just 5 seconds and they will memorise the board so well that they can recreate most of it - 20 pieces or more - an hour later. A novice will be able to place just four or five pieces.

Yet chess masters don't necessarily have a better memory than novices. Their clustering skills begin and end at the chessboard. Show a master and a novice a random list of 20 digits, and a few minutes later neither will be able to recall more than seven or eight of them in sequence. In a chess game, by contrast, the master sees not the 20 pieces that confront the novice but clusters of pieces, each of which is familiar from experience. Interestingly, the chess master will remember about as many clusters - four or five - as a novice will individual pieces. The better the master, the larger the clusters he'll remember.

We all exercise such clustering skills when we read. Learning to read means coming to recognise chunks of letters as words, then chunks of words as phrases and sentences, and - at a deeper level - sentences and paragraphs as components of a work's larger meaning. This chunking puts individual words into logical, recallable contexts. As a result, we'll remember almost all of a logical 20-word sentence and only four to seven words from the same 20 words ordered randomly.

Apart from chunking, the elite also learn to identify quickly which bits of information in a changing situation to store in working memory so that they can use them later. This lets them create a continually updated mental model far more complex than that used by someone less practised, allowing them to see subtler dynamics and deeper relationships. Again, this is something skilled readers do with good novels. However, it appears more striking - more suggestive of "genius" - when we see these skills used by Garry Kasparov to simultaneously beat 30 grandmasters or Zinedine Zidane to spot a killer through-ball that no one else saw.

Such masters seem to operate on another plane, yet the rest of us can take solace in knowing that their mastery rarely extends beyond their discipline. It is a fair bet that Roger Federer would beat you at both tennis and ping-pong, but not as soundly in the latter. The gap will shrink as you move further away from his field of expertise. Michael Jordan, widely considered to be one of the world's greatest athletes, struggled horribly when he moved from basketball to baseball, where he was routinely flummoxed by minor league pitchers. Likewise, if you ever met Kasparov over a poker table, you might well hold your own.

While the study of elite performance has been based mainly on observational and interview techniques, its models agree nicely with what neuroscience has discovered about how we learn. Eric Kandel of Columbia University in New York, who won a Nobel prize in 2000 for discovering much of the neural basis of memory and learning, has shown that both the number and strength of the nerve connections associated with a memory or skill increase in proportion to how often and how emphatically the lesson is repeated. So focused study and practice literally build the neural networks of expertise. Genetics may allow one person to build synapses faster than another, but either way the lesson must still be learned. Genius must be built.

Studies of elite performance also chime with another recurrent theme in modern neuroscience and genetics. These disciplines all but insist that the traditional distinction between nature and nurture is obsolete. What we call talent or genius illustrates vividly what the past 25 years have taught us about gene expression - that our genetic potentials are activated and realised only through environment and experience. Natural buoyancy merely gets you off the bottom. You rise to the top by pumping yourself up.

So is the ideal of innate genius dead? If not, should we kill it? Certainly a clear-eyed analysis shows that "genius" is really a set of exceptional skills cultivated through disciplined study. We should probably shelve the notion of genius as an innate, almost irrepressible gift and speak instead of expertise, talent or even greatness - terms that hint at the work underlying supreme accomplishment.

Granted, this isn't as fun, and recognising the work factor is sobering. It is disappointing to realise all your mom's blather about how smart you are doesn't mean jack, and that you have to work demonically regardless. But as something to believe in, genius is not looking so smart. You want to play the big stage, you got to put in the time.

Gift from the Sea : Summary

Anne Morrow Lindbergh decides to take a brief retreat from her life to spend some time on Florida’s Captiva Island and ponders over several aspects of life. This book is a compilation of those thoughts. First published in 1955, this book was a big hit and was translated in to 45 odd languages. More recently, there was a 50th anniversary edition of the book with a preface written by Lindbergh’s daughter Reeve Lindbergh  

The book is about 5 types of shells that author finds on the island . She relates those shells to life situations and talks about ways to deal with different life situations.

 Channelled Whelk:

The author looks at the bare beauty of this shell and realizes that her shell is ugly. The way in which accumulations of things ,  thoughts , people have cluttered her life and made her shell ugly, is the lesson she draws from this shell. Simplification of life is one of the ways to build a beautiful shell in your life. “To ask how little, not how much, can I get along with? “ is the essence of a minimalist life and this shell reminds her this stuff each day.

 

Moon Shell :

The author describes this shell as an island , set in ever-widening circles of waves, alone, self-contained and serene. We are all, in the last analysis, alone. And this basic state of solitude is not something we have any choice about. Instead of deluding ourselves and acting as though we are not solitary, we attract endless distractions in our lives and finally the distractions consume us completely. She suggests a way to have moon shell inside each one of us, “ If you can take a hour off/ day off for solitude at regular intervals, you see that your life becomes that much more richer”

 

Double-Sunrise :

The author describes this shell as an image of pure relationship, smooth , whole and unblemished. We experience only moments of having such feelings but sometimes we cling to the thought that such moments should last forever. A couple would always want the relationship to be the same as the one during the courtship period, a start-up founder would love to keep the culture of the company same forever, a mother might want her son to always be kind, tender and loving , a son might want his parents to always be nice to him etc. There are umpteen number of situations where we experience a few moments / days of Double-Sunrise shell and we want that situation to remain forever. This is a false notion, says the author. For things cannot remain same with the changing situations. But this Double-Sunrise shell reminds each one of us that we must take time out and recreate such moments from time to time. This helps us in seeing relationships with a fresh vigour and infact helps in coming to terms with tides that ebb and flow in life.

Oyster Bed :

In author’s words, “Oyster Shell is humble and awkward and ugly. It is slate-colored and unsymmetrical. Its form is not primarily beautiful but functional”
She compares Oyster Bed to middle years of marriage. It could as well be the years just after a start up has grown big enough and can no longer be called a start-up. However my analogy to a start-up is probably not that appropriate as that of a maturing marital relationship. “Spreading family and growing children might be the appropriate situation that Oyster Bed symbolises. This shell symbolises the time when you are tied up with so many aspects that the beauty lies in the functional aspect of the role.

 

Argonauta :

“ There are in the beach-world certain rare creatures, the “Argonauta” , who are not fastened to their shell at all. It is actually a cradle for the young, held in the arms of the mother Argonauta who floats with it to the surface, where the eggs hatch and the young swim away. Then the mother Argonauta leaves her shell and starts another life. Can we middle-aged Argonauts , when we outgrow our Oyster bed, look forward to a similar freedom of nautilus who has lefts its shell for the open seas ? “ questions the author.  She then describes a day spent with her sister on the beach and tries to think about the perfect day and writes these beautiful words.

What has made the day so perfect ? To begin with , it is a pattern of freedom. It’s setting has not been cramped in space or time. An island, curiously enough, gives a limitless feeling or both. Nor has the day been limited in kinds of activity. It has a natural balance of physical, intellectual and social life. It has an easy unforced rhythm. Work is not deformed by pressure. Relationship is not strangled by claims. Intimacy is tempered by lightness of touch. We have moved through our day like dancers not needing to touch more than lightly because we were instinctively moving to the same rhythm.

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently on the same pattern, intricate but swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart’s. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern and freeze the movement. to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place here for the possessive clutch , the clinging arm, the heavy hand, only the barest touch in passing. The joy of such a pattern is not only the joy of creation of the joy of participation , it is also the joy of living in the moment.

She ends the book by saying that she would keep these 5 shells on her table at her home back in the city to constantly remind herself of what they stand for in her mind.

Takeaway :

This book can be read by anyone, at any stage of their lives. One will always find some situation where one can relate to the situation / context mentioned in the book. Author’s powerful words will definitely make you reflect on your own life. If you read this book in silence, with music shut,  TV switched off, cell phones off,  cutting all the usual distractions, a few pages from the book are enough to make you be at peace with yourself and the life around.

One can treasure this book for life.

Miracle of Mindfulness

Written by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, this book is a classic volume on the importance of mindfulness in our lives.  The author introduces mindfulness with a Zen story  - “Washing Dishes to Wash Dishes “.

The central message from this book is to be completely mindful of whatever activity one is doing.

Be it ,  preparing tea  / exercising /  gardening / telling a story / talking to a friend / doing office work /  whatever be the kind of activity one is in to, by being completely present in the moment , one develops a deeper understanding of oneself and can remain in peace , irrespective of the outcome.

Lately I have resumed my Sitar practice after a  gap of 5 years, what seems to me like eternity. One thing that  I have realized from getting back to music is that playing an instrument is one such activity which will force one to completely mindful. For whatever time one plays , one is always in the NOW , and in that sense, any musical instrument is  a conduit to mindfulness.

Experiencing Vs Remembering Self

In a delightful talk, Daniel Kahneman , proposes a different notion of happiness , that which has two elements, Experiencing Self and Remembering Self.

If you were told that, at the end of your vacation, all the great pictures that you have taken and  the memories associated with the vacation would be erased, Would you still opt for that  vacation ? 

 

Quote for the day

Via Leo Babauta

You can’t change your entire life.

You can only change your next action.

—

You can’t change a relationship with a loved one.

You can only change your next interaction.

—

You can’t change your entire job.

You can only change your next task.

—

You can’t change your body composition.

You can only change your next meal.

—

You can’t change your fitness level.

You can only start moving.

—

You can’t declutter your entire life.

You can only get choose to get rid of one thing, right now.

—

You can’t eliminate your entire debt.

You can only make one payment, or buy one less unnecessary item.

—

You can’t change the past, or control the future.

You can only change what you’re doing right now.

—

You can’t change everything.

You can only change one, small thing.

And that’s all it takes.

Joy 24 x 7

My Yoga teacher suggested me to go through some talks by Sadhguru and particularly on Isha Yoga and Isha Foundation. Some of the videos are available on the internet

Well, as usual I was pretty sceptical about the so called guru culture and the kind of double lives that they lead, as portrayed by the media.

Till Date I had never heard of Sadhguru  and only because my teacher asked me to read about him / listen to him, I tried looking him up on the net. I have found him to be a superb communicator with immense clarity in his thinking. Thankfully he does not advocate any religious beliefs or dogmas.

This  book written by an IIM-B alumnus , Jeetendra Jain reminds me of Geet Sethi’s book titled “Success Vs Joy” that I read years ago. This book is on similar lines.

 Takeaway :

Being Joyous is not something that you must look forward to , after doing certain things in life.

Joy is a state of mind that you should begin with and then the rest will happen , whatever that is supposed to happen.

Complications : Summary

I stumbled on to “Better” at a crossword store in Mumbai. Picked it up immediately after spending a minute browsing through the book... The book turned out to a great read. Had blogged about it here a month back.

So, with that experience behind, I ordered the other two books written by the author Dr. Atul Gawande. His first book which is extremely popular is “Complications”. “Better” is his second book and recently he came out with a book titled “Checklist Manifesto” . With very high expectations, I began reading “Complications” and by the end of it , the book did not disappoint me.

This book talks various incidents in the medical field under three themes which are Fallibility, Mystery and Uncertainity . 

                 
Fallibility 

The image of bad doctors ,for most of us  , are doctors who do evil things with their patients. However the author recounts a different experience. There are lot of good doctors who become bad doctors, and what he means by bad, is that they unknowingly do harm to the patient , more so because of their personal problems. Be it divorce , alcohol, burnout , or plain neglect to be constantly aware of the patient needs drives some of the doctors to do more harm than the status quo of the patient. Some doctors , as it seems, forget the nature of human fallibility and the consequences of dealing with such doctors becomes rather tricky for the hospital and the supporting staff.

For people like me, who have no clue what goes on in the medical world, it was interesting to read about the way doctors learn from their mistakes, individually & collectively.  The author mentions about M&M, Morbidity and Mortality conference where the docs talk about their mistakes. The purpose of such meeting is to discuss faults, failures in various surgeries that were undertaken by the respective hospitals.

Another interesting aspect mentioned about the field of anesthesiology is the way the docs are prepared and trained. A life size computer driven mannequin is used to to train anesthesiologists. It reminds me of the book Talent Code , where there are umpteen number of examples where learning was accelerated when there was an environment to make errors and quickly learn from them. The computer driven mannequin served the same purpose. With out harming any real human being, the docs learnt about various errors and hence they could deliver superior performance in the real world. 

I can related one thing I have been doing for the past few years ONLY, though I should have done this much much earlier. Whenever I learn something , I try to simulate data and examine the results, rework and get the formula / estimate being talked about. Simulating data and then working on this data has given me an idea about the things that could go wrong in an analysis. I can test all sorts of bias and see whether my analysis holds good.  I have increasingly started living, examining, testing in this artificial simulated world for the real world offers very few data points and the mistakes , if they happen, you pay a heavy price.

The book talks about Shouldice hospital, a case in point of specialization and focus. In most of hospitals 10-15% of hernia operations fail. But not at Shouldice hospital. Why ? What’s so special about this hospital ? Well, it turns out that Shouldice hospital employs about dozen surgeons who don’t do anything but hernia operations. They do about 680 hernia operations per year , more than a surgeon would do in a life time. So, this repetition of the same type of operation day in day out, changes the way the docs at Shouldice hospital think about their problems. In Gladwell’s words, may be the sheer # hrs logged by the docs performing hernia operations makes them outliers. In Gawande’s words, Repetition changes the way the docs think. Most of the activities are done automatically with doctor’s mind focused on those little nuances of the patient’s health which are crucial to the make or break of an hernia operation.  This is a beautiful case which shatters the myth that doctors should dish out individual customized treatment. Well it sounds good in theory, but as far as stats are concerned, systems , error induced learning, # of hrs logged in doing that activity play a far more important role in the overall success rate of a hospital , in the context of a specific surgery.

“The key then to perfection is routinization and repetition”

So, to think of it, if a job at a company is routine and repetition, then probably there is a chance for you to master something. If you are working on multiple projects in a year, ya , you might know a lot of things , but it is unlikely that you will master something!! . When you hear your friend / coworker saying “ My job sucks because it is routine..”.. Well,  I guess you can sympathize with them not because of the situation they are facing, but because they are not utilizing the situation that something is routine and repetitive , to master it.

The author mentions another interesting point about high performance surgeons versus the rest. He quotes a few research studies which bring out the point that , highly successful surgeons are those who are willing to engage in sustained training. Skill and Confidence in surgery is learnt through experience, haltingly and humiliatingly. So, one’s willingness to practice is all that matters. High performers are clearly those who put in a greater amount of deliberate practice. This means that,

“The most important talent may be the talent for practice itself”

    Mystery

This part of the book deals with various mysteries surrounding the field of medicine, which we outsiders think that docs have all the solutions in the world. The author takes the reader through a few essays that deal with issues that doctors consider it a mystery . Some of the mysteries explored are the mystery of pain in a human body, mystery of nausea , mystery of blushing in a person, mystery of overeating. With specific instances for each of these above mentioned issues, the author drives home the point that science has no clear cut answers to identify symptoms and offer remedies to the patients.

 

 

Uncertainty

In the world of stats, there is a term called “ Aggregation Bias” . This basically means that if you observe an effect at a global level, you cannot generalize at a local level. For example, if you think have data from all the major cities in India about 2 variables, Y being income levels, X being % educated population . Lets say you make a model out of these two variable only. You might see some effect of education on the income levels. Can you generalize it to every person in every city..No ..This effect is valid at a city level. By applying it to an individual, you are assuming that the city and % educated population are independent. Are they ? They need not be and in most cases they are not. So, this aggregation bias is a killer for most of the social sciences papers that have been published..You see some effect at a macro level but you cant say anything at a local level.

Ok, why is the above stuff relevant to the book? Well, doctors are trained on general rules and general symptoms etc. Basically you can think of it as imparting education at a macro level. However when they work with the patients, do those rules, heuristics, education etc help ? Well , to some extent says the author. More likely it is not going to help . Author gives an analogy of ice cubes. If you study the properties of a set of ice cubes, you can be reasonably sure about the property of an individual  ice cube..Alas!! humans are complex species. So, the doctors always face uncertainty in dealing with their patients and this part explores a few uncertainties that are part of everyday life of docs.

  Takeaway :

The book is a real page turner which gives one , an insider’s look in to the medical field. Your understanding about Fallibility, Mystery and Uncertainty will definitely be more richer after reading this book.

Rational Strategy and Irrational Behavior

I believe that there are patterns in markets that can be studied to take arb positions. Some trades go wrong , Some trades go right. Overall as long as you are right in majority of the trades, you are safely home.

It was easy for me to accept this framework when a LOT of my trades went wrong. I was enthused about fixing the parameters of the strategy, getting a better time window, using a ton of diagnostic tests etc. It was fun to fix the problem.

However my frame of mind changed when the strategy started working, working crazily well. I started believing in all crap things that are not logical by any standards. Today I got totally wacked , in most of the positions. For some strange reason I started looking at various areas which are not related to trading at all, not related to parameters at all. In fact , I started looking in some behavioral reasons for getting it wrong. Utter BS !

As things stand, I can't explain this behavior of mine. Shouldn't I be rational , irrespective of the trade outcomes ?
Why does "getting trades right", induce a sense of irrationalism in me ? Shouldn't I be still skeptical about trades , EVERY single time and take a law of large number view , EVERY single time ?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

This is the first time I am struggling to write anything about the book I have read.This book explores themes in a very complex way. The author plays with opposites, heaviness and lightness, life and death , god and atheism, love and hate etc. These themes are explored from the lives of the characters in the novel , Tomas, Sabina, Teresa, Frez . Relationships with god, wife, mistress, country, animals are explored through out the novel in "opposites".

For all the complexities in the book, I could not put the book down since I started reading it last evening.

One who likes exploring the opposites that come up in life would find Kundera's book very engaging. I think this book needs to be read at least a couple of times to understand completely the author's intent.

Shop Class as Soulcraft : Summary

It has been more than one and half months since I have read any book. Was involving in developing some stuff @work, so was completely immersed in it. Decided to read this book on a beautiful Saturday.

Came across this book in an NY times article and was looking forward to read the book, as it was relating to an aspect which is close to my heart, hacking.Hacking in geek's jargon is ripping apart software, packages, libraries, things and understanding stuff at level 0. In some sense,I guess there are two types of people, first kind who do not want to get their hands dirty a lot and would rather assemble, manage a set of people to accomplish some task, second kind are those who want to hack things and build things from scratch. By the kind of education I have undergone, I should be doing the former but I have found joy in the latter activity. In that sense, I could relate to the author was a Chicago Phd , academic, whom one would expect to write papers, do research and be a professor. Instead he chooses to become a mechanic. Why ? This book answers that question and much more. Author has organized the book in such a way that it traces author's experiences from being a young apprentice in a repair shop , to being a PhD from Chicago, to working in a cubicle, to finally coming round the circle to repair shop again.

Separation of Thinking from Doing

The author traces the dichotomy that has been built in to the society, courtesy the industrial clock-work mentality. In the so called knowledge worker world, it seems to many of us that knowledge , thinking etc is crucial and implementation can be done easily..outsource the code, break down the task in to process and decouple the process in to a simple components which require less skilled labor. Interesting the word, "compensation", comes from the fact that work which required high skilled engagement of both physical and mental faculties is reduced to a few mundane repeatable steps and the worker has to be compensated for robbing of this kind of work and replacing it with some less engaging work.
This essay is a call towards picking up a trade and working on that trade for a long time to understand, engage and produce something of value. According to the author, nowadays everybody is called an Einstein, be it a best buy worker, or a management consultant. However it is easy to forget the fact that Einstein or Rembrandt are , what they are because of their commitment and submission to something in the initial stages and subsequently mastering it over a long period of time.

To be a master of one's own stuff

The ideology of freedom is at the heart of consumerist culture; a promise to disburden us of mental and bodily involvement with our own stuff so we can pursue ends we have freely chosen; For some of us, we don't even know what end we are pursuing, whether the end is a figment of imagination based on current circumstances, whether it is changing etc. Anyway coming back to this so called freedom from DOING and INVOLVEMENT, robs of the experience of having a direct responsibility of things.

A true gem of a statement in the book :

To be master of your own stuff entails also being mastered by it

There are umpteen number of examples quoted which go on to make this point that by subjecting oneself to being mastered by something else, one can experience joy. Be it music, where the rigid rules of keys and notes need to be submitted to, before novelty can be displayed. Learning a new language is also akin to submission. Let's say you are learning French and like any language it goes by a set of rules. Only by submitting to the rules, one can enjoy the experience of the language. If you have ever written a software library, developed a UI, developed a software, built a system, the initial days are usually where the language/syntax etc is your master. You have to obey it or get kicked( debug errors). But once you know the rules, then it's like heaven. You can play with the code, components, rules and create something innovative. The more low level language, the more joy it brings to your work. Imagine the difference between building a library using C/C++ vis-a-vis building something using point and click interfaces. There is a ton of difference in doing things at a lower level than merely working using the surface level pre-built things.

In today's world, autonomy , individualism, freedom are the buzz words where every individual strives to be an individual, in the literal sense of the word. He/she picks and chooses from an array of choices available and tries to establish an identity for oneself. Marketing, is hell bent on showing how customization is the new cool thing.. If one ponders a bit, one realizes that the marketing jargon is doing something else to us. It kind of equates picking and choosing relevant things to freedom. Nope, we are merely selecting. We are not tinkering with the details, which means we are still operating at the surface and are disconnecting ourselves with the true nature of the system that we are interacting.

The best thing mentioned in the essay is about Yamaha warrior 2007 ad:

Life is what you make it . Start making it your own

The picture shows a guy in his home focused intently on the warrior. He's not smiling for the camera. He's lost in his work. Underneath the caption is written in small font, You only get one shot at life- may as well make it mean something!.
This sort of joy obtained by hacking things is never obtained by mere selection of pre built things, like wearing a good helmet, having a good rear mud guard etc. Joy , as suggested by the ad is only obtained by close tinkering of the machine to suit one's likes and dislikes. and such a close tinkering provides JOY and not superficial selection is what the entire essay is about.

Education of a Gearhead

The author narrates his experience as an apprentice in a repair shop in California. His interactions with Lance , Chas makes him work on things and allows him to ponder about the different worlds, one at home where his dad is a mathematical physicist who deals with beautiful abstractions, the other world is the mundane repair shop where utilitarian aspects triumph abstract things. Being in close proximity to repair personnel, he realizes the importance of attentiveness while repairing vehicles. The same set of data can be give different signals to different people based on their involvement levels. Spectator skills won't do. I get the same feeling when people merely sit around the fences and trying to guess the next hottest startup, next hottest trend....Why sit as a spectator? Shouldn't one not get involved in the game ? Well, as they say , different people get attracted to different types of dispositions.

Pure Mathematicians and Builders fall in one category. If you think about it, the builder and mathematician builds something out with a specific mental image of something. If the theory or building falls, it is entirely the responsibility of the creator. However motor repairing skills / doctor's skills are very different. They are inherently dealing with things they have not built. They are looking at fixing things which means the realizations of the problems are stochastic( This word was used by Aristotle to describe specific kind of arts which require attention and openness to things as they are). A specific write up in Robert Pirig's Zen and art of motorcycle maintenance is also mentioned to bring home the point that " At work, being good-natured , friendly , easy going and UNINVOLVED is useless" . In our lives we come across so many people such as described above who are good in nature but don't involve themselves completely in any specific activity and hence appear as spectators. It isn't fun to watch spectators as much as to watch players hitting the runs. Well, I believe it is better to play the sport and than watch either spectators or players :)

The point of this essay is that practical world needs a person to be involved, attentive , make the work personal. At the same time, develop a paradoxical feeling of being unimposing of their views / assumptions etc on the things they come across. A true statistician would say , form a null hypothesis and test it out. However that needs to be appended with another aspect, " develop a personal connection to the thing you are testing, only then there is fun, joy and in the end utilitarian.

Further Education of a Gearhead : Amateur to Professional

This essay recounts the tension between engaging in work completely Vis-a-vis client's budget constraints. There are instances when the author spend more than required time , reason being a obsessive drive towards perfection. Not always was the client intent on spending money for all the hours spent. There are cases when the client needs the motorcycle to just run and give him just enough service in his budget constraints. Working in abstractions is good in ivory towers but not in real world where different people have different agendas in your work.

The Contradictions of the Cubicle

This note contains author's experiences as a knowledge worker and sheer paradox between the quality of work and intellectual status the work offers. Author goes on to talk about the degree inflation, the so called corporate culture where most of us seek an identity, a place where in the name of team work, management creates more vague notions of work satisfaction. There is also a comparison between Site crew and a team at a office which shows the vast differences between the two. A clear objective measurement and sense of achievement is usually seen in a trades job, whereas in a big company, the contribution one makes is often difficult to measure and it could be result of a ton of random forces beyond your control.

Thinking as Doing

Author makes a strong case that tacit knowledge that is obtained from years of understanding, tinkering can never be replaced with algorithms, computer systems. I don't necessarily concur fully with the view of the author as I believe systems and raw computing power can be used as an effective aid for understanding. Lets say before the advent of statistical software, simulating and understanding various aspects probability distributions, stochastic processes would have been very difficult. High frequency trading which permeates the world of finance would have never flourished had there been no money produced by those systems.

However I do agree to the point that our society gives more importance to thinking rather than doing. However increasingly the lines are blurring. A feedback loop is the key and a person who is involved in both the steps is the person who is going to do something productive. Confining to only one part of the loop is not going to be effective, point in case are technical writers in IT companies. They write documentation with out ever writing a line of code, with out ever building a user interface. Result : Reams of useless English documents which serve as no purpose. Yes , indeed tacit knowledge which is gained by doing is somehow thought to be replaced by computers/ processes in a few fields,is a shaky ground which will collapse soon if not now.

Work , Leisure and Full Engagement

I felt that the last essay is the best essay of the book, because it probably echoes a similar feeling that I have about work and life. Examples quoted in this essay are numerous. Why does a mortgage banker work like mad and looks forward to Climbing Everest holiday? Why does corporate jetsetting consultant thirsts for a vacation in australia, Amazon's rain forests etc ? There are a class of people who live dual lives. In one part of their lives, they work and accumulate money. In the second part of their lives, for some it is weekends, for some it is end of year vacation, they release their pent up need for an experience where feelings and action are linked together. However there are a set of trades where one can live in one unified world where work and life intermingle and have a meaningful relationship between them. There are so many wonderful points made in this essay that my summary would do no justice to it. Overall takeaway from this essay is that finding work as a way of life is crucial to live a joyous life, else an individual is forever living in 2 worlds, one in which he/she makes money, and the other in which he connects with core need !

This become reminds me of Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham. Excellent in prose and to the point , where the central message of the book is to work on things which offer you to mix thinking and doing.

For those who are time strapped and are looking for a 2 minute video recap of the book, here is a youtube link :

Outliers : Summary

 

Bought this book in India for $2 , less than the shipping cost of an item from Amazon!. Price difference of books sometimes amazes me. If one really wants to read a set a books, one can manage the stuff with a very lean budget in India.

This is a book about outliers. In some sense, everybody wants to be an outlier. Ask any person and he/she might say " I want to be different" . He/She wants to be different. However there are only few people in this world who manage to be very very different from the rest of us, as far as the eventual world-measured-success is concerned. This book emphasizes one single point through out. Outstanding achievement/Success is made by certain individuals because of the culture they belong to. There could be many variables that effect the success of an individual. Malcolm Gladwell takes one such variable, culture, of the individual and tries to weave experimental and anecdotal evidence to argue that , culture, probably could be one of the most significant variables that determines success of an individual.

The book starts off with an interesting finding at a place , some 100 miles away from Bancor, Pennsylvania. A surprisingly healthy community who all come from a place in Italy and are unusually healthy. This example brings out the "Outlier" effect. Is health related to the usual known causes or Does culture have a big role to play in it ?

Gladwell talks about the Canadian Hockey league and shows that date of birth , and specifically date and month of birth have a tremendous effect on the success of the person. The eligibility date of the Canadian Hockey league somehow seem to have a great effect on the type of successful players which the system churns out. Someone born near the cut off date has a far more likelihood to be grouped with a set of younger students and eventually displays far more superior skills in the group and thus gets to the top , thanks to the asymmetric age distribution in the group.

10,000 hours is the effort required to master anything , as per gladwell's research. Be it Bill Joy, Bill Gates, Beatles, Paul Allen, every one of the rock stars/ chess players/ entrepreneurs seems to have put 10,000 hours of passionate efforts to become excellent in their respective work. If you put in 12 hrs of effort, 7 days a week , which is 84 hours a week. In a year it translates to approx 4200 hours. If you can spend at least 3 years this schedule of 12hr days, then there is no doubt that you can become proficient, as per Gladwell.

Author runs a story about Joe Flom , a successful lawyer and glosses over the usual reasons that are given for the success of an individual. Instead he focuses on specific events that arise in Joe Flom's life , Being Jewish, Demographic luck, 3 elements of flow (autonomy+complexity+effort & reward ) coming together in the type of law practiced. These factors , gladwell, cogently argues are the main reasons behind Joe Flom's success.

Personally, I found the story on Rice paddies to be the most important part of the book. Gladwell explains the connection between the effort spent on rice fields and the way the same traits are carried in to the math abilities of Asians. Truly the most interesting narrative that I have read in the recent times

There is also an account of KIPP school in Bronx which illustrates the importance of "more schooling" rather "less schooling" being the reason behind the turn around of the school. Author presents the data which says that the only reason which the elite school kids perform better other kids is the way they spend their spare time. Well, the spare time is what decides the expertise of a person.

The book ends with the story about author's mother where a set of fortuitous events lead his mom from Jamaica to US .

The book is a great one-time read of a few stories which go on to hammer the point that , culture, where you come from has a significant bearing on your success. If you are a gladwell fan , you might not want to miss this book.

The Power of Less : Summary

 

This books falls under a specific category of books which includes titles like " In Praise of Slow", Zen books which focus on simplicity, Productivity books etc. As the title hints, there is one simple theme running through out the book - "Declutter your life, in all aspects of your life." Cutting down variables and living with fewer and lesser variables in life is a far richer experience than dealing with a lot of variables and trying to do justice to all the variables.

This book is a classic productivity book but is completely in odds with the "Getting things done" - David Allen talk. The author Leo Babautta says that simplifying things relating to various aspects like, information intake, email reading habits, internet browsing time, goals in life, people whom you deal with, working on the daily tasks, etc. makes a lot of sense. The book gives some practical tips to simplify things in life.

The book can be read in less than hour's time and at the end of it will make you feel that Life is a objective function where the lesser number variables makes it easier to find the maximum value of the function. In fact, it makes me feel that the local maxima could also be the global maxima!, if you choose the right kind of variables!

For those who feel overwhelmed by stuff in life, this book is going to be a welcome breather. However one can get the best out of this book only if one implements and experiments with at least a few of the stuff mentioned in the book.

Variables

Sometimes there are so many random variables that one needs to deal with all at once. It kind of gets on to your nerves.

Most of the variables are stochastic in nature. The distribution for each of these variables X(t) changes for each day. It looks as though X(t) follows a known distribution for a given t. However as t increases, one starts seeing the distributions are no longer stable. There are jumps / non random behavior beyond comprehension.And worst of all, completely independent variables(at least which I assume) start showing extremely positive correlation / extremely negative correlation.

Ideally one can summarize an objective function as a function dependent on certain variables. These variables can be characterized as known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns.

In real life, known knowns are very very few and one can easily deal with them. Everyone knows what they are.

Coming to known unknowns, these variable cause the maximum pain. Known unknowns are those variables one tries to predict and adjust one's behaviors accordingly. But alas! , sometimes known unknowns are too many and the problems starts showing up. Uncertain distributions, uncertain correlations, variables morphing from deterministic to stochastic and back. These known unknows that I deal with are may be 10 variables and I for one am finding extremely difficult to deal with these 10 variables.

Well. then there are unknown unknowns , which , for reasons that can't be verbalized, I think I am well equipped to handle. May be because the known unknowns have sucked up so much of my energy that I am confident to handle any unknown unknowns. Atleast that's the frame of mind I am in.

One convenient way is to shove all the known unknowns in to unknown unknowns category and live a peaceful life. Well then the world is Black and White world. It is either known knowns OR unknown unknowns .But soon I start realizing that it is difficult to live in that state of world. Mind always tries to trick me in to hypothesizing about known unknowns. Vain effort OR Intellectual Orgasm OR simply succumbing to human behavior ..whatever it might be, I do not know.

Variables, Variables everywhere...Well , the only thing that is constant as of now seems to be ONE of the known knowns, thankfully..

Quote for the day

Standardize and you simplify lives;everyone learns the system only once. But don't standardize too soon; you may be locked in to a primitive technology, or you may have introduced rules that turn out to be grossly inefficient, even error-inducing

    -- DONALD A. NORMAN

Quote for the day

Standardize and you simplify lives;everyone learns the system only once. But don't standardize too soon; you may be locked in to a primitive technology, or you may have introduced rules that turn out to be grossly inefficient, even error-inducing

    -- DONALD A. NORMAN