rAnDom PoSts bY a rANdoM ThInKeR

You know that feeling when your brain is a runaway train, but your fingers are just… pedestrians? I had this hunch the other day while staring at a blinking cursor. We always talk about "efficiency" like faster is always better. But what if the medium we choose acts like a gear system for our mind? I decided to look up the numbers, and the "impedance mismatch" is real. • Handwriting: ~13 words per minute (wpm). The school zone speed limit. • Typing: ~40 wpm (up to 80+ if you’re in the flow). Highway cruising. • Speaking: ~150 wpm. The autobahn. • Thinking: Estimates vary wildly, but some say our inner voice clocks in at 400 wpm, while abstract thought moves at the speed of a lightning storm—thousands of words per minute. Here is my theory: The friction of the medium filters the quality of the thought. When you handwrite, you are forced to slow down to 1/30th the speed of your brain. That bottleneck is a feature, not a bug. It forces you to compress, synt...

Human history is a saga of relentless creation. From ancient foragers seeking better tools to civilizations building more houses, growing more food, and forming larger communities, progress has largely been a story of "more." We strived for abundance—more knowledge, more entertainment, more possibilities. And now, in the 21st century, we’ve achieved it. But abundance comes with a paradox. In every field of life, from art to information, the sheer volume has sharply declined the average quality. The mass-market mentality caters to the lowest common denominator, flooding us with mediocrity. However, that’s only one side of the story. If you look closely, you’ll find more excellence too. The needles in the haystack have multiplied, but the haystack itself has grown exponentially. Take art as an example. Films today cater to every imaginable style and taste. Blockbusters dominate headlines, but independent gems and experimental masterpieces are flourishing—you just need to know...

Had this inkling of an idea and wanted to try something new. Just have multiple known personalities explain my own idea to me in their own style. Makes the concept surprisingly fun and clear. See for yourself.  Prompt We all conscious beings have a unique seat to experience this interactive immersive movie with 5 senses.  Is there free will? Possibly but much less than we assume. So I think it is practically great framework to assume that no one else has free will but only you do. And that too only to make a transition from one state to another it is not reliable as a motivator for action but it is like a shifting gear to just shift the automaton from one state to another.  It’s helpful to assume others don’t have that free will in order to channelize our free will to just bother about our automaton because it is really hard to use someone else’s free will to change there behaviour using our free will.  Also this leads to forgiveness and internal locus of control and...

This post is written with the help of Gemini, including the artwork.  The salty air whipped through Silas' beard as he stood on the weathered dock, surveying the vast expanse of the Market Sea. As the first blush of dawn painted the horizon, a thousand questions swirled in his weathered mind. Where would the fish be biting today? East, where the sun promised calm waters, or west, where whispers of a coming storm danced on the breeze? Every day, Silas faced this delicate dance with the Market Sea. His livelihood, like that of many investors, depended on understanding the currents and winds that governed its fickle whims. He knew the tides of interest rates held immense power. Low tides meant more fish ventured out, enticing investors to cast their lines deeper. But high tides could leave even the most skilled fisherman stranded on shallow waters, with dwindling opportunities. Then there were the ever-shifting winds of the macro and geopolitical environment . A gentle breeze from th...

This is the story of a girl who can best be described as a dove. She was gentle yet mannered, pleasant yet hard-working, and full of love, which gave her a fair glow that only improved with age. The story starts early when she was pampered by her brothers and a sister for being a cute little girl in one of the richest households in a small town. This is where she learned what unconditional love really means and then used her whole life to spread it.  One way she would do that is through food. You felt her warmth through her food. Be it unique recipes like mango bhajiya or amrud chutney or though her tireless insistence on ensuring nobody in the house skips so much as a snack. When she was sixteen, she was married off to a polar opposite personality: a tall wheatish handsome rationalist. He was everything she wasn't 'an emotional bubbly fit-in-anywhere'. And thus they completed each other perfectly. It surprises me even today how they never even saw e...

There are days, and no one is spared from those, where everything just seems off track. On some of these days, you are dizzy and overwhelmed by the list of things to do. On others, you are so lost that you don't even know what to put on the list. Existential questions like "Where am I headed?" and "What if I am not good enough?" start making a way into your head, until some youtube video or an Instagram notification comes to the rescue. This post is an epiphany that I had on one such day. A batsman (choose your favorite) comes on the field with the pressure of scoring tons of runs, in limited deliveries, while maintaining his wicket. The first few deliveries he faces are short and inviting. He succumbs to the pull and goes after them, yet misses them all. Time to enter the thoughts in Dravid's mind... "What am I doing missing these easy balls?", "Everything is going wrong, I could've lost my wicket on any of those, haven't scored a run...

Someday I want to give this analogy in some talk somewhere Many people enjoy music but believe that they are tone deaf. I believe that music is at least as intuitive as speaking. Say if I tell you the following. I have the following agenda for today 1. Talk about music. 2 . Make a case that everyone has music   and I stop there. I say the word music with exactly the same pitch in both the points. And then ask people do you think there is going to be a third point ?  Just by keeping the note in which I say the last work people know of this is the end or there is more to come. Interestingly the end note is the same note that you started speaking in. People know that the journey is over only at the home note. This is very intuitive. Another thing which music has naturally is triads so people will always have a tendency to have 3 points. It feels unnatural to stop at 2 points. And then I will go on to show the video by mcferrel about how pentatonic scale is natural to all ...

You earn and save . You save and you invest. The more money you have the safer you feel about the future. Net worth of a person or a company or a country can be seen in various ways. One of the most common assumptions of capitalism is that net worth of a person is equal to the value he/ she has contributed to the society. whether it is true or false or where it is true and where it is false is a different debate. This post is about a second interpretation. Your current net worth is like a buffer or inventory you keep because of the uncertainty of the future demand of money in your life or that of your family. money is a store of value which you can exchange later. Now imagine a factory which keeps a lot of inventory in between its processes. would you call it an efficient factory. of course it is less susciptible to overall breakdown because every machine in the work line has enough inventory in betwwen them so that even if one part breaks down others continue to work on thei...

  While looking at various wikipedia articles day in and day out, I figured it is really difficult to grasp a concept if i start reading from line one. I always scroll through for some examples down there of the concept and then look for the generalisation at the top. similar approach should be followed in teaching. The idea of a school is not to thrust knowledge but to create an environment where students seek learning. Its like recreating the atmosphere again to recreate the eureka moment for the students. So start with a simple example then ask why questions to reach the generalization. because that is how learning happens.

Recently a lot of events that I am thinking about have boiled down to one important lesson for life. On accountability. __ "Tu idhar udhar ki na baat kar ye bata ki kafila kyun luta humein reh zanon se gila nahi teri rehbari ka sawaal hai" __ a huge laid out project at work is flailing and there is no one who is accountable because everyone was true to its incentives and no one had the accountability. __ nitpicking and complaining about what other has done is easy. advising is easy but what is difficult is to hold the pressure of accountability and responsibility on your head and do the deed, accomplish the task. So if you want to get the work done your way you also have to face the stress of accountability or your advise may or maynot be heeded. __ self taken accountability is better than given because when taken it is generally taken with a knowledge that one could do it better than it is done right now. __

I think there is an ideal state for everything; static or dynamic. Some things are better if firm, unmoving and non-volatile, while some others are good when dynamic and ever changing. This thinking model is a special case of the yin yang model. Some examples: Examinations ( any filtering, screening, measuring, interviewing, appraisal... ) A stationery system of measurement is subject to gaming, If the objective is to get the best, and the variables of being best are many, then it makes sense to keep changing the screening patters every time. A stationery system will be gamed and if diamonds are what you are looking for any stone can be shaped to look like it given sufficient time. In the other direction things like fundamental principles or resolutions or the big goal of life need to be firmed up real soon. As harivansh rai bachchan said " rah pakad tu ek chala chal..paa jayega madhushala " There is accomplishment at the end of all roads, but you get to walk on ju...

Everest Base Camp and Kala Patthar Trek, Nepal with Jatin Pasrija and Rohit Singla                              In March 2013, as soon as it was thought that the course was clear, I went for the trek of my life, to enjoy the pristine, untouched snowclad mountains. It was a trek to the first base camp of the revered Mount Everest. If I only show you photos from the trek, they would appear as just another set of wallpapers. If I write about my experience it would feel dramatic. If I just give you numbers like -20 degrees centigrade, 5365 meters, 450 Pascal thin air, etc. you may understand that I am talking extremes here, but I may still not be able to tell you what I experienced. So if you are fascinated by anything that I mention below, stop and allow yourself to be. Lets start the story from Kathmandu as it will be the common sta...

Am not going to say anything new, just jotting down my thoughts on this idea. So I have been thinking that every thought has a life , just like any organism. It is born in the head of a person in the form of an idea. It only takes life if right kind of thoughts mix in a conducive environment. There is a limited nutrition that the brain can provide to thoughts and so many of them die very early on. some which survive and become strong, then grow out and use other parts of the brain and the human body as a whole to reach out to the world and grow beyond just one mind. They become strong enough to narrate the mandate of this brain henceforth and gain enough power to determine the state of the new thoughts being born later. ...So I have been thinking. Now given the above idea there is a different direction in which I extend the analogy whenever i sit down to ponder. For instance today i was wondering while a thought/idea is being propagated through the population how important it is ...

I have some ideas now and then which just die without making it to the world..so i have decided to at least give them a chance of life by throwing it out to the cyberspace. If by chance someone happens to land on this and get inspired or are already working on something similar. I would love to hear from you. One of such ideas: The roads when clogged have bumper to bumper traffic. in such a scenario even if the traffic if moving without a roadblock, there is a wave like nature that develops because of many degrees of freedom, one with each car. these lead to long periods of stalling then movement for a couple of feet and then stalling again for each of the cars. this then leads to inefficient usage of time and fuel. more details here. and here http://math.mit.edu/projects/traffic/ so one suggestion is to latch a car onto one another. doing it mechanically is not feasible because in cities cars need to change course now and then as each one is going on a different route. ...

With the idea of becoming a man of action as a matter of internal resolution that I have made starting this week...following is the collection of videos , articles , suggestions, inspirations that should keep me on track. This is the only scene by alec baldwin in the movie and he won the oscar for the movie..important thing to learn: CLOSE

I think we feel the connection to the divine in the moment when we have something inside us, without form and then we happen to create it or see its form in the outside world. So for example a good art is the one where the artist tries hard to give form to his formless thoughts, beliefs and instincts..and then the audience experience some connection between their insides and the art piece in the real word. which they are unable to create themselves. sometimes wht may happen is that just the way the outside world is shaped by artists inspired by inner ideas, instincts etc, even the outside world changes the inner ideas. generally happens a lot of people who don't try to give shape to their own instincts and so by exposure to various arts ( which are in turn manifestations of others instincts) leads to them believing that their own instincts are shaped like the art they see...this is the "connection " that people feel with some or the other art forms. probably why we lik...

Granovators model says about peer effects that the chances of a collective movement depends on the thresholds of different people. so if the thresholds are less and highly distributed,chances of collective movement is more. So why don't collective changes happen quickly in india...why is it that tipping does not happen fast? 1. huge population? is it a boon or a bane according to the model? 2. high thresholds? or don't we have herd mentality..i think we have low thresholds.. 3. good distribution of thresholds..aah i think the problem is here. in india we have relatively low thresholds but not very low and at the same time we have whole of the population at a level where it cannot hit tipping point...basically a 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7 distribution can achieve tipping point but a 0,1,3,3,3,3,3,3 cannot even though it has a lesser threshold on average. so all india needs is the missing link to unleash the potential tipping point..te missing 2..

Do the highest Bungee Jump Sky Dive Scuba dive in the Great barrier reef White water rafting Para gliding Own the best Mac Book that Apple ever comes up with Own an Audi  Be alive to see my Fourth Generation (that will make me a person who lived with 7 generations of his family) Play Violin in a concert Play 7 instruments in a concert: harmonica, guitar,  Be on all 7 continents of the world Asia America North America South Africa Europe Australia Antartica See 7 wonders of the World Taj Mahal Eiffel Tower Pyramids Great wall of China Colosseum in Rome Chichen Itza StoneHenge Facebook friend count of 3717 Good Reads count of 700 Stand on a land at 5000mts altitude Have 7 lac rupees in my bank account Have 7 million rupees in my bank account Have 7 crore rupees in my bank account Have 70 crore rupees in my bank account Have 7 billion rupees in my bank account Live a monk's life for one whole month Touch 200 km/...

Enough introspection during these days of placement has given rise to this very fundamental philosophical question : what does know thyself actually mean? Last year at iit I had accepted that I al not that kind of person who leads people is a coordinator of a group etc. I thought at least I know myself. Today after two years in IIM and leading a group of 22 students some even senior than me to run the alumni cell for the past year, I feel that this is what I want to do in life. To empower people and lead people because that is the best way of causing a larger impact and effective execution of ideas. So does knowing yourself mean knowing yourself as a dynamic evolving self or does it mean understanding what I am at the core and stick to it once you know about it.? Resisting change.

Like all students I was in my tenth standard once. I remember an interesting episode from that time. In my final board exam(not CBSE but Maharashtra board) we had a group D question which went like this: If we put an inverted cone in a cylinder full of water, the cylinder being of the same radius and height, how much water will spill..(and the radius and heights were given.) Even then, my memory was like a bowl containing petrol kept in hot summer sun. Things just evaporated out of it. And I could not remember what the formula for the volume of a cone was. I knew it was similar to that of a cylinder but that was the most my hard disc could store. I tried hard but could not reach any corner of my head where i could find even a slightest hint of the formula. Ironically, almost 10 years later, I still remember exactly, that i was trying enough to remember the day when my teacher (Dhond madam) taught us mensuration.So that if not the formula I could remember the day and then get s...