shreyas pandya

Sloth: One of the deadly sins

2017-07-13T20:50:00+00:00

While writing on this topic first thing that comes to my mind is the lyrics

And burn

You will burn

You will burn in hell

yeah You’ll burn in hell

You’ll burn in hell

Yeah you’ll burn in hell for your sins

from this song “Take a Bow” by Muse. It is uplifting music, one of the songs to start off with your day.

I am not a very religious person but I do like to consume knowledge in any form. Whichever the origin of a book; it has something to offer. Any school of thought is basically a generalization of some one’s observations (whether or not done with scientific method) thus it holds true for that narrow set of phenomenon observed by the writer. Thus I think ancient scripture is just a crude version of science. Scriptures of any of the religion is simply an attempt to explain many of the things that any thoughtful human would want to contemplate about. For example origin of universe, purpose of life, explanations for worldly events that we witness in our life time, classification of animal kingdom, understanding of human nature, etcetera.

The seven deadly sins:

Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Pride, Sloth

is an attempt to generalize common human behavioral patterns. It is a decent model to explain human actions and motivations. All Human actions typically fall in one of those categories. When any of the behavior is repeatedly done to the extreme it becomes a sin. Understanding this model is a great way to keep your behavior in check and saving yourself from harming and helps in maintaining healthy society.

Ideally I would like to be in full control of my actions, making sure that they don’t cross that extremity where it can be labeled a sin. The reason is not necessarily that I have a strong sense of morality and great belief in God. It is rather because it feels like violation of my free will. When you fall victim of committing one of the sin; you find your actions driven by that motivation heavily. That obligation on your action means loss of free will in your actions. It is pretty irritating state to be in. Feeling of lost control over metaphorical ship that you are; in the journey of life time.

I really want to talk about one particular sin; the sloth. The one sin I fall victim to from time to time. Procrastination is the form in which this sloth manifests. Putting off gym, putting off guitar practice, not reading that one book you wanted to read for long time, procrastinating at work, putting off learning that new skill that will boost your career, abandoning that side project which never got past 10 commit in repository, putting off that new initiative you wanted to take at workplace. The list goes on.

Why do we fall in this rut. I want to get to the bottom of this. Why is it so difficult to just do things you know you are supposed to do. Is it because doing nothing feels better than doing something? Or is it because you are stupid lay person who only derives value out of things that give instant gratification? Or because there is some demoralizing factor for doing the task so instead you are doing other meaningless filler activities like browsing social media and watching YouTube to suppress anxiousness and boredom?

The real reason for procrastination is fear of failure, I don’t procrastinate because doing nothing feels better than doing some work, it is the anticipation of imperfect delivery, anxiety of humiliation, fear of failing to meet our own standards of quality. I procrastinate until the state of doing nothing becomes more dreadful compared to fear of failing or it trumps the fear of doing something with imperfection at least.

I keep falling in this rut again and again. But now since I have understood it there are few things I can remind myself when it happens.

Recognize it and acknowledge it when procrastinating.

Tell yourself that doing it even imperfect is better than doing nothing.

Don’t over estimate the consequences of failure.

Trust in people that there will not be humiliation but encouragement.

I hope this helps next time I find myself procrastinating.

An Impasse

2015-01-04T18:53:00+00:00

So far the career has been a tale of progress starting at a minimum wage in tier-I city in India to getting decent enough wage to live comfortably (almost) after three years and two jobs. It did make my parents proud. But I am not completely happy with the current situation. I mean yes I am kind of enjoying the better standard of living and all, the freedom of making so called hedonistic choices in life. But I still feel off course in life or without course at all. A sense of no achievement. Like living life without superior goal. And if I compare what I thought in college where I would be by now to whare I actually am now, it makes me wanna die. I have reached an impasse in life. What follows is my ideation on plan to overcome it.

So people of my age who are living decent life in a city belongs to following (oversimplified and stereotyped) categories

those spoiled brats who have no apparent goal in life than enjoying life and showing off by living envious lifestyle. And when the time comes they settle down in their father’s already established legacy.

Others like me coming from lower middle class and have landed in thriving IT industry of India. Allowing for them to mimic the life style of those spoiled brats discussed above.

So I have reached an impasse in my life. And so should rest of the people of my category at this stage, what is next in life. Settling for a mediocre job is definitely not an option. Where should I take my carrier next. If I don’t do any thing about it then at least I can get some other job of higher pay. But thats just same stupid situation with ability to buy expensive shoes. With current skills and experience there is no scope of having drastic career change. An entrepreneurial career is what I dream of every minute of my life. What are the current opportunities for a person of my skills and experience to kick start a startup. In India; however, You can easily start a services company.

Another option is to go to academics. Do masters and PhD. Settle down as a lecturer at a prestigious Institution. I think I might like that. May be do a theoretical physics research. Unify the quantum mechanics and theories of relativity. Or solve the mystery of dark matter. Okay may be I fetched it too far. But you get the point.

Well, lets just stick to the computer science. Make a product that solves real life problem. I think I can do that. But first thing is to get an idea. If I get an Idea then build the team who can help me take it further. Then execution which requires pouring money. and launch it to market and live happily ever after. In theory looks great. But there are practical challenges. Based on my heuristics here it goes.

The first challenge is finding a dedicated team. “Dedicated” is important because when you ask anybody to join the team every other dick head will say yeah “I am in” but really end up wasting your time. Another problem is that avoid ending up with wanna be Steve Jobs who are basically filled with phony confidence, obnoxious arrogance and “I am better than all” attitude. One more thing about founders’ team is that if you are not communicating on an average two hour a day then your idea is in trouble. Communication and constant sharing of thoughts is very important. So it can get tricky if team is geographically apart. Your team as roommates is the ideal scenario.

Second problem in this plan is that you have a job and you have to do this start up in parallel. It can take lot of motivation to keep it going. Also applies to all those involved in the team. Then comes the execution which requires money; decent amount of it. Blowing away personal savings as on a risky product launch is not what I would do as a middle class Indian guy. Also not having any is a different problem altogether.

And launching and getting decent user base would be a tricky thing but it is a matter of intuition, hard work and to much extent luck. And then comes investor into picture and if things workout you feel life was worth living and all. Story ends.

But right now I have no product idea nor a team. So all I can do is do my job, learn new skills ~~and make more friends~~.

Oh wait, I can instead work on side projects that can enhance my skills and add to my heuristic instinct. ROI on those is actually very high (intangible of course).

So yeah, see you on Github!!

Creativity vs Academic Intelligence

2014-09-20T10:33:00+00:00

I serendipitously stumbled upon this lovely story. I have reproduced the entire content here just for the sake of convenience.

Here it goes.

Some time ago I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up against the student: The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.

I went to my colleague’s office and read the examination question: “Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer.” The student had answered: “Take a barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building.”

I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full credit since he had answered the question completely and correctly. On the other hand, if full credit was given, it could well contribute to a high grade for the student in his physics course. A high grade is supposed to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try at answering the question I was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I was surprised that the student did.

I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said no. He had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on.

In the next minute he dashed off his answer which read: “Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop that barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then using the formula H = 0.5g*t squared, calculate the height of the building. At this point I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and I gave the student almost full credit.

In leaving my colleague’s office, I recalled that the student had said he had many other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. “Oh yes,” said the student. “There are a great many ways of getting the height of a tall building with a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer and the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building and by the use of a simple proportion, determine the height of the building.”

“Fine,” I asked. “And the others?” “Yes,” said the student. “There is a very basic measurement method that you will like. In this method you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units. A very direct method.” “Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of ‘g’ at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference of the two values of ‘g’ the height of the building can be calculated.”

Finally, he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the problem. “Probably the best,” he said, “is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent’s door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: “Mr. Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer. If you tell me the height of this building, I will give you this barometer.” At this point I asked the student if he really did know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think, using the “scientific method,” and to explore the deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is often done in the new mathematics, rather than teaching him the structure of the subject.

As it says on the link; the article is by Alexander Calandra and appeared first in “The Saturday Review” (December 21, 1968, p 60). It is also in the collection “More Random Walks in Science” by R.L.Weber, The Institute of Physics, 1982.

Dreamers

2014-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

They can obviously spot anomalies that others can not see even after explicitly pointing out. They can immediately suggest better design and spot what is redundant in the design. They sometimes laugh at pathetic organism tangled in the web of recreational activities. They often laugh at frightened soul trying so hard to save his position of power. They can’t breath within closed walls of big corporate. Reality is too monotonous for their vivid imagination. day dreaming is their prime activity. Delusion is their real world. People see them as idiots. They can assign meaning to their life by way of act.

Thoughts on Human Civilization

2014-05-24T19:26:00+00:00

What makes us stand out from the rest of the animals is having better control over our impulses, ability to delay the gratification for possible better future outcome. The likeliness of delaying gratification diminishes as the future outcome seems less probable. But people who still does it are called entrepreneurs. They are the people who pushes humans as a species to next level.

We have come this far from the hunter gatherers to dominating species because we are civilized. Civilized means having well behaved people in society thus eliminating the need to rely only on survival skills and allowing time for humans to work on superior activities like research and technology and creative things. It is because of civilization it is possible to organize large group of people to work towards common goal. Thus allowing us to accomplish missions that were never possible.

Ideally if we didn’t have any impulses we would have colonized the galaxy by now.

In theory communism is the best and most efficient system. But it does not work because we humans have impulses and we need freedom of choice. So coming up with system that hits the sweet spot between efficiency and freedom of choice is necessary. I don’t know if we have achieved it already (Capitalism?!!). Fundamental characteristic of that system should be sustainability while reaching as much efficiency as possible. That I would like to call equilibrium of human ecosystem.

What is Happiness

2014-03-28T16:33:00+00:00

Perception of Happiness is highly subjective. In fact it could even be so contradictory among two individuals that ones recreational activity may look entirely ridiculous to other. However perception of happiness is now a days to very much extent affected by popular media- TV, Movies, MTV :) - people are constantly bombarded with the idea of what is happiness and what is cool through this medium and even worst; this is the only medium they collect this information through.

Now my complaint is not against these people (may be a little). But rather a concern for that minority population that does not find any gratification in these perceived superior gratifying activities. They are frowned upon for having non mainstream interests. Getting laughed at because you are seen reading a book about Stoicism. Post modern urbanized world just seems so unnatural. A loner is stereotyped as a loser. Introverted is mistaken for stupid, sad and lacking confidence. Opportunities are given based on first impressions, setting open stage for impostors and charlatans.

But its not all that bad either. A few of those impostors and charlatans may get through and achieve some success because the system is not perfect but real winners after all are the ones who are genuine and sincere. They may look naive but are so more by choice than due to lack of awareness.

Any way coming back to happiness; it is established centuries ago by philosophers that it is not something objective. And those who think philosophy is hogwash it is also now scientifically proven by neurologists that your brain can be trained to accept any thing as happiness (see this TED Talk). And that is what happens when you consume too much idiotic media (TV essentially). Your frontal lobe of brain is a great simulator(and a malfunctioning one) that basically hypes the future outcome of any event. Which also leads you to believe something will make you immensely happy but in reality the gratification might be insignificant.

Don’t let external factors define your happiness. Define your own that is more meaningful, sustainable and of social value.

Work culture: Introverted vs Extroverted

2014-01-15T15:50:00+00:00

A coworker recently suggested that we should have more meetings at work as opposed to just communicating thoughts over email while sitting in our respective dens. The discussion went on (over mail yet).

The way I see it, it was debate going on between introverts and extroverts. Of course you can guess who took which side.

Me being an introvert, would not really mind not having direct human interaction and would prefer written exchange of thoughts. But This is not how extroverts function (and they are majority in this world which explains why majority of organization has extroverted work culture).

Having group discussions is motivating for extroverts because they thrive on human interaction to stay motivated and energized (as I inferred from this TED Talk) While giving desired isolation to introverts can help foster their creativity and imagination and bring forth new ideas. And in an organization both are inadvertently going to coexist (and is desirable). So I guess hitting the sweet spot between the two cultural extremities is some thing we can try to achieve.

If you are interested in knowing your personality type take Myers-Briggs personality type test here.

Why should you take personality type test you say? I will explain that in another post.

Art and Fear

2014-01-08T12:26:00+00:00

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: 50 pounds of pots rated an “A”, 40 pounds a “B”, and so on.

Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.

It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work-and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Source: don’t remember

It's a fool who plays it cool

2013-10-27T21:36:00+00:00

For well you know that it’s a fool
who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder.

Beatle’s “Hey Jude”

This guy just nailed it in this post, Do your own thing

particularly I like this

“You do your own thing, huh? That’s cool, man.”

The take here is that “I am self content and happy with what I do.”

And I like this one too from the article

Ultimately, I hate being pigeonholed. I’m not “just” a programmer. That’s why I don’t work at large companies: I have multiple interests and don’t want to do the same tunnel-vision duty every day.

Importance of programming

2013-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

In software industry as the employee gets promoted, his role starts to demand more management functions and he loses touch with programming. It is a debatable question whether senior staff should also do programming in order to stay in touch with the technology. It may not always be possible to remain in touch with programming as other responsibilities increases. But true programmers should never quit programming. Here are the reasons why.

###Constantly changing tech world

Technology changes very rapidly. New frameworks, new tools, new programming languages new specifications comes into existence frequently. Older skills soon gets outdated. You need to stay in touch with it to make sure your team is using the best stack there is. In order to understand new technology, hands on programming is the only way.

###Following Best practices

Even after choosing best stack you need to make sure team is following best practices to get the best out of chosen stack.In order to establish best practices for chosen technology stack hands on programming is necessary rather than reading other people’s Blogs.

###Predicting feature complexity and feasibility

While predicting product feature complexity and time estimation people with hands on programming experience can accurately do this.

###Understanding roadblocks

During implementation phase team inadvertently faces roadblocks. And misses deadline. Senior people can better empathize with the team if they exactly understand the problem.

Time Standards

2013-03-16T00:00:00+00:00

We humans have this sick compulsion to keep track of time. Many time standards have emerged while trying to come up with standard ways to measure time in due course of existence of human civilization. Some independently and others successively.

There are so many time standards in use for various purposes. I have tried to simplify (ok I over simplified it) and present what you might just want to know.

Wikipedia defines time standard as

Time standard is a specification for measuring time: either the rate at which time passes; or points in time; or both.

wiki

Usually the time standard gives their own version of Second or Day or both. So in order to compare each time standard we just have to see what a Day or Second means according to that standard. What follows is the list of few often mentioned time standards and its exact details.

International Atomic Time (TAI):
It is very straight forward standard. It tics at the rate of SI Second . It defines day as exactly 86400 seconds. So it increments a date exactly after span of 86400 seconds. Counting of days is as per Gregorian calendar.
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT):
Perhaps the first formal time standard. However it was originally not meant to be a time standard. Its purpose was to help maritime transport navigate by broadcasting accurate time at Greenwich Meridian. But gradually everybody started setting their clocks to GMT time signal.
GMT specifically keeps track of mean solar day. Date is changed at noon when the Sun* crosses Greenwich meridian. However mean solar day is inherently longer than 86400 SI Seconds, put it another way, “GMT Seconds” are longer than SI Seconds.
Universal Time(UT1):
Successor of GMT and supersedes it. Only difference from GMT is that day changes at mid night, while in GMT day changes at noon. GMT now means UT1 implicitly.
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC):
This also tics at the rate of SI Seconds. Day is 86400 seconds long normally but sometimes 1 second longer or shorter to keep in sync with UT1. It is basically a hack to track mean solar day with SI Second. Since all the computer clocks and watches tics at SI second and we humans being diurnal animal want to track mean solar day, this UTC was introduced as civil time.

###Leap Second

UTC tracks mean solar day with SI seconds. normally a day is changed after 86400 seconds. But mean solar day is slightly longer than that (2 ms). So at some predefined date, day is made 86401 seconds long to adjust the drift in day from mean solar day. It is not fixed when leap seconds are introduced. This is because mean solar day depends on earth’s rotational speed which is unpredictable. So it is introduced as needed to keep UTC in sync with UT1 (essentially mean solar day)

_{* fictitious sun not the actual sun. See solar day}