A word from the wise

I attended a talk at the Vedanta society last week after a long time. Anyway, the year long gap made the lecture last week thought provoking rather than simply sweet and calming. Constant religiousness works like pain medicine – after a while you get immune to any benefit of it. (By religiousness – I mean my version of religion, but that is a different topic).
The talk was largely about humility. One aspect of the talk was that gaining education simply means gaining knowledge - completing a course in education is akin to getting a “degree” – you only advance in the degree of knowledge you have. It is what you do with the knowledge for yourself and society that results in wisdom or intellect. This led to a discussion over lunch about how when growing up we were so wrong about intellect versus physical fitness. Fitness was believed to be something that one might just acquire through good genes and eating vegetables. Whereas gaining higher education was paramount in making you a better or worthy person. Achievement was based on how much knowledge you could acquire compared to the competition. Knowledge was supreme and the educational qualification of a person determined his/her worth.  In reality, wisdom and intellect are something that you can only gain through humility and actions that utilize the education or knowledge that you have acquired. On the other hand, good fitness is something that you can acquire through training for it, eating the right types of foods etc. It is highly possible to achieve a desired fitness level through working with a formula to get to the desired fitness level. Now this type of work takes a lot of discipline, restraint and hard work leading to perseverance, humility and a certain amount of wisdom. The moral of the story, by a stretch, is that highly fit people are sometimes wiser than highly (educationally) qualified folks

More choices, less satisfaction

On popular request, here is the approximate transcript of my somewhat impromptu Toastmasters Speech #3 from earlier this week:

How would you like your bread? White, wheat or rye? With butter or cream cheese? How would you like your coffee? With milk or cream? How about sugar? How would you like your bacon cooked? Very crisp or somewhat crisp?
Who doesn’t like choices? But how many of us would at times like someone else to make the decision for us at least for some of the choices? Three years ago I was having lunch with some of my co-workers when someone related an anecdote about returning a defective vacuum cleaner at Costco 3 years after buying it. I was surprised – can you do that? Now I had some lumpy cushions at home at the time that I was about to donate to Goodwill. On a dare, I took them back to Costco where I had bought them to see if they would take them back. Sure enough they cheerfully did. I felt bad – I told them that they need not take it back. I was about to donate these. But they claimed that this was their customer service policy. What started as a harmless prank turned into a torrid love affair with Costco. I found myself buying more and more things in the wonderful world of choices that Costco has to offer, comfortable in the knowledge that I could return anything I didnt need. Costco became a weekend routine, a habit. So much so that when I drove one Sunday only to discover that the shutters were closed due to the long weekend, I felt — empty.
Moral of the story – just because I had discovered so many more choices, I was not necessarily more satisfied.
Just when I needed it, I came across this book “The Paradox of Choice- why More is Less”. Life can be unbearable in a culture with no choices. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that having more choices leads to more satisfaction. This is especially important in the consumer oriented society of abundance that we live in today. The book was certainly an eye opener for me. Among other things the book describes the two kinds of people that make choices: Satisficers -who pick something that is “good enough” from the available options in front of them and Maximizers – who research all possible available options and strive very hard to get the “best”. Given human nature is prone to regret decisions and that people tend to take things for granted sooner or later, in general a satisficer tends to be more satisfied in the long run as they have invested much less in a decision than a maximizer. For example, you may spend months researching a car, but the minute you drive out of the showroom you are plagued with doubts regarding your choice.
So the next time you are confronted with an array or options, forget what you have learnt all your life about always choosing the “best”, going for the “best”. Think about the actual situation and the decision you need to make. Make a conscious effort to really understand the cost of the choice, and how much you really want to invest in the decision making, before burying your time and energy in the choosing.

Flash cards vs Post-its

I am not an adventure sport kinda woman, but lately I feel like work is one big adventure sport where you are constantly edgy, exhilarated, exhausted, and then some. Well, not really – its just been one of those weeks. In the middle of the week I had a big aha moment about post-it notes and flashcards. Given the vast amounts of potentially life altering post-it notes I have lost over the years either due to fade, lintificatoin or extreme crumplification, not to mention increasing illegibility as the letters get smaller when content grows…this is actually a great breakthrough in my life. Flash cards are at least as useful as post-it notes! In fact, I am begiining to believe that they are more useful. 
Earlier today, I came across wikigroaning  in a techcrunch article about the fact that wikipedia has a nerd bias. (Why is that news?) Obviously I had to compare post-its with flashcards, and was thrilled with the result. So starting tonight I am giving up post-its. Frankly, when was the last time you wrote a post-it and the low-tack(y) adhesive actually adhered strong enough or long enough to be useful?

Daylight wasting

Kayaking – 2 hours | Gardening – 3 hours | Farmers Market - 2 hours | Buying open-toed sandals – 3 hours
Stepping in and out of the house to the deck to experience the sublime temperature - 4 hours |  (Laundry – waiting)
Daylight – Endless.
Summer fatigue is setting in. We need a concept of Daylight wasting similar to Daylight Saving.  My definition of daylight wasting – on all sunny days in June and July, 2 hours of guilt-free time (when it is sunny outside) sleeping / doing aimless research on the internet / closing the blinds and watching a movie / indulging in ultimate indooritis.
To be fair, this weekend was not all outdoors – we just watched a Bollywood dvd “Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna”. It was really funny at first but got weepy about half hour into the movie. It is always bad news when you are surprised at the intermission, expecting the movie to end instead. The post-intermission movie was more great lines, sappy sappy, weepy weepy. Overall, I thought it was progressive as I have not seen many blockbuster non-artsy movies about failing marriages and complex relationships. But really – nothing that couldn’t have used a good wringing at getabstract. Also the heroes and heroines plastery white makeup was very distracting even on our modest 32 inch. All the more reason to wait to upgrade the TV – wait for the good looking people on the idiot box to upgrade their makeup first.