Evolving from Polychronic to Polymath

A Precious Gift for Self - Lucid Dreaming

2011-11-10T21:34:00.001+05:30

When I saw the movie Inception. I liked it a lot. Then i got interested, if anything like it existed in real world. i stumbled across the following links :

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/07/inception-peering-into-the-science-of-dreams.html
http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/29/inception-science-dreams-technology-brain.html

which described something called, lucid dreaming. which essentially means dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming, from where one can take it to the next level of dream control. and your dream becomes your playground, your universe with you as the creator. you can read more about lucid dreaming on the following link :

http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html

Also to do a quick check. how much do you remember your dreams? you can train yourself for better dream recall, which is primary step for moving to lucid dreaming. explore for yourself the precious self the art of lucid dreaming, where you can play out your fantasies. i wanted to share the power and gift of lucid dreaming with all, hence i posted about it.

The ultimate motivator

2011-11-08T22:19:00.000+05:30

I was looking at my RSS feed for learning new things today and came across the HBS working knowledge item : http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6792.html which discusses the ultimate workplace motivator. in essence i understood that it is being recognized as part of an elite group or club. you can let me know if you think otherwise. to motivate my team at workplace i devised a game inspired by the famous show "survivor". which includes giving points to each task and having competitions on defined intervals. Since my team consist of test engineers i have the following game setup. you can create your own games for family or any group.

6 member Teams of diverse skillset.

Weekly scoring for each team :

1. 1 requirement update during walkthrough : 20 points

2. Created 1 Scenario : 10 points

3. Missed or Major Rework 1 Scenario : -10 Points

4. Minor rework 1 Scenario : -5 Points

5. Created 1 test case :

a. Simple : 2 points

b. Medium : 4 points

c. Complex : 6 Points

6. Missed or Major Rework and functionality or traceability 1 test case :

a. Simple : -2 points

b. Medium : -4 points

c. Complex : -6 Points

7. Minor rework 1 test case : -2 points

8. Executed 1 test case :

a. Simple : 2 points

b. Medium : 4 points

c. Complex : 6 Points

9. Major Re-execution of 1 test case :

a. Simple : -2 points

b. Medium : -4 points

c. Complex : -6 Points

10. Minor rework on 1 test case execution : -2 points

11. Cross team Review comment on 1 Created Test Scenario : 4 points

12. Cross team Review comment on 1 Created Test case : 4 points

13. Cross team Review comment on 1 executed Test Case : 4 Points

14. For each Review comment leakage to BA for the review team : -4 points.

15. Valid Blocker defect : 20 points

16. Invalid Blocker Defect : -20 Points

17. S2P2 defect : 10 points

18. Valid Rejected S2P2 defect : -10 Point

19. No points for S3, defects, and S4 defects will be considered as part of IDS updates.

Rewards :

a. The winning team each week will not be dissolved to be voted again to max of 4 weeks.

Reward Challenges : Weekly

1. Knowledge Quiz.

a. Application

b. Domain

c. Team Members : Social Skills

d. Testing Concepts

e. From the Skill Matrix areas.

2. Project Efficiency Records.

3. Risk/Issue Analysis and Management Strategy.

Prize : Voting Power, for task allocation from a list of tasks to entire team and team points next week based on rules below :

1. Task allocation for knowledge development hands on, without compromising delivery :

a. By 1 levels : 50 points per individual.

b. By 2 levels : 100 Points per individual.

2. Task allocation for knowledge development hands on, compromising delivery : -100 points.

Immunity Challenges : Once per month Individual

1. Process Design change for streamlining project.

2. Estimation Challenge.

Prize : Self empowerment.

a. Allowed to pickup tasks for 1 week.

b. Will get choice of team to work with where team should decide who they can vote out.

Immunity Idol : Weekly ( After efficiency benchmarks are set by previous challenges )

1. Individuals with exceptional weekly performance, or 300 Individual Points.

Prize : Self empowerment.

a. Allowed to pickup tasks for 1 week.

b. Will get choice of team to work with where team should decide who they can vote out.

Finally selected individuals from various teams will be part of a core team that will be driving the strategy of project.

The Beauty of Life : Mastering Biology with a difference

2011-11-05T22:12:00.000+05:30

My previous post being on the gift of memory makes obvious way for next post on biology. Biology has interested many polymaths. Da Vinci, discussed in my first post was a biologist as well. solving problems in biology provides immediate impact, by making life better. solving the current problems around protein folding is taken to next level by university of washington, by creating a game for harnessing ignited minds who can use their 3d spatial abilities to solve one of the latest issues in biology. I also got interested by the fact that i can solve real life problems, by playing with my 3d spatial ability. The game is called fold it and can be found at http://fold.it . Also can be read about at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldit. I have the same installed on my machine and working through the tutorials for initial solving. the tutorials can be found at : http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/Tutorial_Puzzles. My current inspiration is that a team of gamers with scientists have solved a riddle of HIV. you can find the news item at : http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=foldit-gamers-solve-riddle. you can find a screenshot of a moment in my game below :

Also I would like to continue updating my adventure with my memory that i mentioned in my previous posts on memrise.com for learning mandarin. I have now learned more than 100 words in amazing time for me. you can find the screen shot below.

The Gift of Memory

2011-11-04T20:57:00.001+05:30

Here I start the thread from my first topic of Interest memory, and explain importance, techniques and personal experience with the technique in memrise.

Who does not want to be great? If you want to be a polymath, or considered genius, the basic faculty that you should have is to remember information from multiple fields for Instant recall and use. One of the celebrated polymaths was Leonardo Da Vinci, the following extract from wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_been_called_%22polymaths%22. Explains why:

· Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519); Artist, scientist, inventor, painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, mathematician, physicist, philosopher, humanist, alchemist, biologist, naturalist, anatomist, geologist, technologist, astronomer, cartographer, botanist, cryptographer, geometer, draftsman, designer, scenographer, stylist, musician, writer, author and poet. Often called geniuses' genius and Universal Genius, is regarded as "the original 'Renaissance Man'" and is one of the most recognizable polymaths ever. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. "In Leonardo Da Vinci, of course, he had as his subject not just an ordinary Italian painter, but the prototype of the universal genius, the 'Renaissance man'..."; "prodigious polymath...".”The scope and depth of his interests were without precedent... His mind and personality seem to us superhuman". A man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time. Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon, being reproduced on everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualized a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. He made important discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics. Leonardo's scientific accomplishments are often reduced to inventions (of which he made very many) or to speculation, and an adventurous spirit. Recent writing shows that he was in fact a serious and brilliant scientist, concerned with what today is called 'systems theory', or complex systems; but he devised scientific reasoning models for experimentation, and conducted experiments with validation procedures, all of which qualify him as a scientist in the true sense as well. For the extraordinary and unprecedented range of his work, of which only a minority survives, he is universally considered one of the greatest geniuses in the history of mankind.

To be diversely talented in such a magnitude requires awesome memory because one has to remember a lot of things from a lot of fields. The few things I know about the mechanics of memory I find the following line ‘A man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination’ the defining factor for the legend Da Vinci was. If you look up for mnemonic techniques, “Method of Loci” is a famous way to remember things. You can refer to the following link for details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci. Using this method to great magnitude need inventive imagination so that you can create images to place along your journey through your memory palace. And first you have to be aware of the mechanics of memory to know that this is an effective technique, this comes from unquenchable curiosity of an individual. Both of which was abundant in Da Vinci. I cannot stress more on the importance of memory and what it can potentially make out of you. The following link can be a good read for the same: http://memory.cyberinf.com/importance.html

If you observe, you remember many things from your childhood to your present, and if I ask you, you will be able to describe in detail the items placed in your home, and you will definitely remember places you have travelled and liked. We seem to remember visual things that are associated with some emotion, but we do not use the same analogy when we try learning new things. I bought the book “Moon walking with Einstein” by Joshua foer, and that is how I got introduced to the concept of memory palace and I used my own old home and created striking images from imagination related to each items in his list to memorize and keep at a location in my house along a journey I created from the main gate to the garden in my backyard. You can read more about this book from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Remembering-Everything/dp/159420229X

Then searching for more memory related Information I came across a post from Ben Pridmore multi time world memory champion: http://www.memoryconsulting.com/pridmore.htm where he explains his system of 2704 images to remember cards and uses a subset for numbers and binary. This seems to be great system for using as an analogy for our own images. I have plans to use the same, and try creating similar systems for other things to remember. Then I found the site http://www.memrise.com/welcome/ where I can learn vocab from multiple languages, this site seems to be initiated by Ed Cooke, mentor of Joshua foer from moon walking with Einstein fame. And they featured Mandarin as a major language. I thought, I was always intimidated by mandarin, and if the memory techniques are effective I should not have problems learning mandarin fast, and I was up for a surprise. I did learn more than 60 words over the last 4 days and the total time spent on the site is around 1 hour, you can refer my screenshot below from memrise ( www.memrise.com ). That is amazing by my standards. I will share my updates on memrise regularly so that I can also inspire people to learn new languages from there. I hope that from the above discussion, you will also get inspired to train your memory for new languages or understand the art and science of memory to make better use of it and train the next generation to be great.

What I have learnt, and why i am here.

2011-11-03T20:39:00.000+05:30

I was born to a middle class family like millions in India. As a kid i used to break things and toys to understand how they work. Thanks to my dad who fired my curiosity, by answering a lot and encouraging me to search answers for others. As a child I used to see dad playing carom with his friends, and used to play with me occasionally, that fired my interest to learn carom. Then he bought me a carom board which still is present in my home. I started playing carom and played for years and became quite good at it, my favorite opponent being my dad, who now 72 still is my favorite opponent in carom. When I grew up a little, I like many other kids wanted to play cricket, hence I got enrolled to cricket coaching in class 7 which I left in 10^th partially due to study pressure and partially due to diagnosis of significant myopia. I had to wear glasses. Although I know how to play cricket with leather ball, I not very good at it. My dad always encouraged and supported me to learn new things, which kept me going to the point that learning became a habit. When I completed 10^th, I wanted to learn swimming for the fact that both my parents knew it but I did not. Learning swimming gave me something to look forward to like playing carom, and I can say I am a fairly competent swimmer. As a teen I was always fascinated by stars and created theories about the universe, I loved math and advanced physics, couple of my theories were discussed again when I got my first job interview, some time was spent discussing my imaginary universe model with debate on concepts. Then I joined computer science, which led me to the world of creation and engineering. I always used to get fascinated by Artificial Intelligence and I am still fascinated with it. The enjoyed the wide range of novel things that are there to learn in computer science. When joined my first job and was always stressed while speaking in public, that is when I came to know a session done at office for improving communication skills (based on international toastmasters) and joined the same. Joining which improved my public speaking a lot. Writing this blog can be partially credited to the inspiring sessions on public speaking and group discussions. I was and am learning new things frequently from ever changing technology and new responsibilities in office. After working for couple years when I was sent to Chicago for my first overseas assignment, it was starting of winter. Where at the age of 24, I learned to ice skate, which included falling innumerable times. I went on to do my first tandem skydive from 14500 ft. My second assignment was in Denver, where i learned driving in US and drove hundreds of miles after that in US. The pampering from my mom made me a food lover. Whenever good food is present I get easily tempted. For a long time in my second assignment I had to live on off the shelf food, hence the interest in cooking. In my initial years in job, thanks to a friend, I got interested in stock market analysis, did I know then that my learning starting with fundamental analysis of companies will soon turn inwards for fundamental skills that define every one of us. I have completed MS in software engineering and working towards my PhD in multi objective optimization, while working in an IT company for last 6 years. The things that I am confident and excited with are carom, swimming. The things that I know I but not so confident are cricket, ice skating, chess, hence I want to start over with chess, it being indoor game of the three.

The encouragement and continuous support from my dad in my childhood, created a habit of learning new things frequently. Which is the reason where I am now? I always strive to learn new things and then read books regularly. I agree to the saying that learning is a lifelong process. There is so much to learn in this world. Knowledge comes with knowing and learning new things, which improves our responses to daily events, making us better every day. Hence this blog where I want to share the same passion of learning that transformed my life with ongoing posts about the new things I will learn with everybody so that the gained knowledge does not remain only with me, but it shared with everyone.

As part of life skills presently I selected to learn and research the following activities that I want to learn and share in no particular order, are as follows:

1. Memory Training

2. New Languages

3. Zen.

4. Photography

5. Game of Go

6. Chess: I only know the fundamental moves and play without any strategy.

7. Cooking

8. Martial arts like BJJ, Muay Thai and krav maga.

9. Piano.**

10. Books: my personal mentor.

11. Fold it Solving.

12. New Technology.

I will also share why I want to learn the mentioned things and challenges that I face in coming blogs.