A Professor began his class by holding up a glass with some water in it. He held it up for all to see & asked the students

“How much do you think this glass weighs?”

‘50g!’ ….

‘100g!’ ….. ‘125g’ ..the students answered.

“I really don’t know unless I weigh it,” said the professor,“but, my question is: What would happen if I held it up like this for a few minutes?”

‘Nothing’ …..the students said.

‘Ok what would happen if I held it up like this for an hour?’ the professor asked.’ Your arm would begin to ache’ said one of the student.

“You’re right, now what would happen if I held it for a day?”

“Your arm could go numb, you might have severe muscle stress & paralysis & have to go to hospital for sure!” … ventured another student & all the students laughed … “Very good, But during all this, did the weight of the glass change?” asked the professor.

‘No’…. Was the answer.

“Then what caused the arm ache & the muscle stress?” The students were puzzled.

“What should I do now to come out of pain?” asked professor again.

‘Put the glass down!’ said one of the students.

“Exactly!” said the professor.

Life’s problems are something like this. Hold it for a few minutes in your head & they seem OK. Think of them for a long time & they begin to ache. Hold it even longer & they begin to paralyze you. You will not be able to do anything. It’s important to think of the challenges or problems in your life, but EVEN MORE IMPORTANT is to ‘PUT THEM DOWN’ at the end of every day before You go to sleep. That way, you are not stressed, you wake up every day fresh & strong & can handle any issue, any challenge that comes your way!

Training one’s mind to approach problems in a coherent manner requires first one to be aware that they are not thinking as they are communicating. The first signs of this may be surprised looks on colleagues faces when you suggest something with no clear definition on how you are arrived there. Quite often pure thinkers struggle with either too many thoughts all at once and freeze at not being able to deal with the information overload. Or they have one thought and go into such depth that they lose the context of  the thought.

A good approach is to focus on thinking coherently and be aware that one has leanings to one side or the other. It is also a state of being that one exhibits in there every day activities and does than transcend to all there actions/work one carries out.

A very good example this is the latest development from Google called waves. It exhibits all the qualities of a coherent thought pattern and the result is an amazing product that will transform the way we communicate. Combining diffused, real time communication and online blogs/wiki all into one.  Google Presents a long presentation below about it, It is well worth it.

We are not really very big, The effect we have on each other may well be. Something a little different.

So, what is the point of this blog post. The question that has been concerning me for the last week. Is this, are all the clever people in the world working at ? That is of course preposterous. So why is it then that there is not even a murmur of competition in the water for Google. Yes, there are other search engines, but can you name them. I am sure for the tech savvy of you that you will remember Lycos were that funny little dog, went off and found things that you were looking for, and for the really the early adopters. There is also Alta vista. But where are they now? Well, I know for a fact that they do not hold any dominance in the market and all honesty that has been the case for quite some time. The last time that I used Alta vista, or as it is better known now Ask Jeeves was when 16 MB was considered an awful lot of memory.

So why is it that nobody can come up with a slightly decent product to compete with Google. To put some facts to this question. Currently, Google has 83% of the market share in on-line advertising of billions of webs pages. I would imagine, that it is probably higher. I cannot really imagine anybody using anything else. ‘Go and Google it’ is often considered a solution for researchers to ones off spring. It is well known that working for Google is a very enjoyable experience (see my other blog post) they provide relaxed rooms, think rooms, fireman’s pole, to name but a few of the innovative ideas. So, if you want your company to be innovative and up with the trends. then presumably you may have to take a different approach. In this point I am referring to UK Ltd.

I’m sure there are very many unhappy people at the moment with the current economic climate and less than inspiring job choice. Britain’s innovation and investment in its people is appalling of course it depends who you compare it too Japan or Morocco. One must ask? When will lessons be learnt? Having purely a service based industry with finance at the centre of it has proved to be very costly. It is not inconceivable that some bright spark could have thought of a slightly more innovative business plan and one that is diverse too.

A key ingredient to Google’s success is their philosophy that work and play go together. By engaging the mind in both areas, you create a workforce with enormous potential. Hey, who knows maybe Britain could produce a decent challenge to Google if we think about it.