Insight – Page 2 – akbar's blog

The 40 bits

It is said, scientifically that our brains are processing 4 billion bits of transactions per second. Out of these 4 billion we are consciously aware of only 40 bits at any time. Just 40 bits. The whole body working, the awareness of mind about it’s surroundings, everything is taken care without even us being aware about it.

It’s a very efficient design. Our mind gives us exact information we can process (if we mind gives us info to process – who is processing? That’s another blog post). But, as you can make a guess there is amazing amount of info that is being either discarded or filtered. And this is not always a good thing.

40 bits is our cognitive upper limit. 40 bits is metal awareness limitation. This in-place limitation affects our daily life. We tend to think that these 40 bits are “The Truth”. And over a period of time these Truth’s are turned into Beliefs and belief systems. All this happens even without our knowledge. These 40 bits are the thin veneer pulled tight over our eyes.

Just because we have a limitation, it doesn’t mean we can’t break it or over come it or at least use it smartly. Here is where the Creativity process comes into picture. There are 2 steps to over come this limitation.

Becoming aware of it
Replacing, reusing the 40 bits

1. Becoming aware of it: I have talked about this here, here and here. I don’t want to go into more details, but the gist of it is – you need to be aware of your own thoughts. The inner chatter that happens is where all the action lies. There are a bunch of ways to become aware of it.

Just being still
Being in the moment
Meditation
Being in Nature
Taking a stand whole day – Like “I will not judge anyone or anything all day today” and keep watching yourself over that stance.

Recently I have came across a great book which does this process but with Questions. It’s Byron Katie’s ‘The Work’. It’s a very simple 4 questions inquiry process which is tremendously powerful once you start to use it. I would highly recommend that to adopt a inquiry process if you don’t have time to meditate. Another thing you could do is to read ‘Bhagavad Gita’ every night. I know I sound so totally Hindu here. But, I am recommending Gita not from a standpoint of religion but from the point of view of Philosophy. It drums this whole thought system which, if used, is very powerful. I would recommend Jack Hawleys – Bhagavad Gita for Westerners (not much on mythology and a small book)

2. Replacing, reusing the 40 bits: Well this has been my day to day thing all my growing up years. I always thought that there exist some system out there by which we can be more creative. I have ready and used many many systems – but the whole idea behind it is – you need to stretch out your mind by opening yourself up with new information. In this age and day there is no dearth of information – but if you always seeking the same info- they you are always keeping the same info in that 40 bits you got.

So, 2 books come to mind. Any book by Edward De Bono – he might come out as dry and simple. But trust me try the tools. Another one is by author Dan Roam – He has a visual problem solving framework. His books are here and here. The advantage of using a visual model as compared to textual model is you can put those 40 bits to maximum use. Like if you draw a picture – you can refer to it probably using just 1 or 2 bits – like a pointer for all those computer guys.

I know it’s not easy being aware of our own 40 bits. Awareness is scary and processes are hard. But again it’s something you do on a long term learning basis. You can’t get this done faster. It doesn’t work that way.

This concept of Manifestation

If you are like any other normal person you would have seen a flurry of many many new-age gurus talking about Manifestation and how we are in control of our lives. The idea is not new but the packaging is. It used to be learned, used and followed by a bunch of off the track people in an alternate universe – but The Secret -movie, bought it to the mainstream.(You should also check out What the Bleep do we know? – more real and scientific) Quickly the gurus in the movie turned their back on it and started propagating how ONLY they understand the Secret. The main concern of the people who don’t like Secret is – that it’s too goody goody and non-actioney. The Secret doesn’t talk a lot about the action that needs to be done to achieve what you want to achieve. I totally agree – but hey, don’t shoot the messenger.

I have been, like any other person, curious about this idea for quite some time. My personal freedom and my personal creations are extremely important to me and I believe in the concept of being the person who is in charge of my own reality. I have been reading up quite some books on this concept and this blog post is all the that information filtered to my understanding.

The beauty of belief is – everyone tends to create, see and do what their belief systems dictate. So, based on my beliefs – the way I understood it could be totally off from what others see. This is just my one opinion in the million out there.

The (Hi)Story:

This goes back a little. The way I grew up – was in a patriarch family where my dad called shots on everything. Just like most Indian families. For various reasons and causes, I grew up to be an extremely shy and awkward teenager (who didn’t?). When I turned 20 – I decided that I need to change myself. In someway. I didn’t know what to do. I have been scared of Public Speaking but enjoy the whole process of someone taking the stage and entertaining a crowd. So, I thought I will have to face my fear and then I will be fixed! Little I knew about the arduous process of self-change.

I joined a Leadership Training program which was taught by a Genius who was also a chain smoker. Good start eh. Over the period of next 3 months I faced situations where I almost peed in my pants, cried many many times and embarrassed myself. I wouldn’t want to go on stage at all. It was really hard. But in the end, I ended up becoming aware of 2nd things – 1. The power of my mind., 2. I am still going to be shit scared of public speaking!

Things moved on, life happened. The literature I was exposed to made me learn more and more about other self-help books. I started to form a basic model of how this works in my mind. Fast forward – 2003 NYC. I was taking Yoga classes at Sivananda Ashram. In one class the teacher, talked about how our mind is a powerful tool and how it could manifest things that our belief system tells us we can’t. It stuck with me and I was looking for an opportunity to put it to test.

Somehow, by turn of fate one day I ended up standing in line for tickets to see ‘Rent’ on Broadway. They usually have a raffle before the show to give away free tickets to the very few.(It’s actually the first two rows – which are actually the ‘spit fire’ lanes!) Now, I used this “mind over matter” theory to see if it is true. For the next 30 mins – I did everything I could – thoughts wise, feelings wise, emotions wise, images wise, actions wise, behaviors wise etc – immerse myself into defeating my belief system that I have won the raffle and free tickets. It was not easy to convince my beliefs and it looked stupid to try that. But I kept it on. The third name they called was mine! Now I know – those skeptics who are reading this – it could totally be a spooky coincidence. I agree. But it didn’t matter to me. I don’t think I was so ever shocked in my life like I was then. Literally shaking. I didn’t even watch Rent properly. One thought kept pounding in my head – What else can I do?

The Concept:

So, here I am trying to take this blog post as an opportunity to kinda cull my learning into one small piece. Since I usually think better with drawings and visual aids, I am going to draw a image which comes to mind.

Concept of Manifestation This looked far better when I drew it on a paper. Graffling is not my skill. So, I want to explain the numbered points:

1 – Mental State: This is your present mental state. At any given time there are so many thoughts, ideas, images, sounds, smells etc belong to this mental state. You can leave it as it is or you can organize the mental state. This is the origin. Whatever exists here is converted to reality in some form or shape by the vibrational state. We do have control on this. The inputs to Mental state are

5 senses
Internal talk

2 – Vibrational State: I talked about this in the past. This is the state we have no control over. It’s like the inevitable fact. Nothing we do can change this – directly. However, the only way you can make use of this state is to influence upon things indirectly. How? Through the mental states. So, like the candle light is reflected in a mirror – the vibrational state just mass produces anything that the mental state gives.

3. Beliefs: These are the filters. Affecting what is fed into vibrational state as well as what goes out of it. If you have way too many filters then – there is nothing much passing through – meaning, your mental state doesn’t match your reality and vice versa. We have control over this. We can become aware of them and start dropping them off. The more we clear and select our beliefs – the more mental state matches the reality. Of course we will have to start with the primary belief – we can change our reality.

4. Reality & Results: As vibrational state outputs – they come out of us as actions, behaviors, words, theories, ideas etc. Again these are filtered by our beliefs. Depending on how our beliefs are structured – we act, think and talk, there by resulting in our actual reality.

That’s all to it. That’s the manifestation process as I understand it.

The Strategies:

Knowledge is useless without application or action. So, how do we turn these into personal strategies? Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Objectives and Goals: The reason why a lot of people ask and talk about setting goals is – getting clarity about what you want is half job done. In this model – it would apply to the ‘Mental State’ stage. Just writing down all the goals and setting timelines (realistic) is the first step.

2. Meditation: This might sound odd for Manifesting theme. But what meditation does is – it basically lowers the resistance of our beliefs for the time we meditate. I talked about a meditation method in my previous post. So, let me break it down a little in detail. You do meditation for 15 mins every day. Those 15 mins, you try to concentrate on your breath. It’s hard but with practice you will get to stage where you can do that. When you focus on your breath – there are 2 things happening: 1. Your thoughts are being ignored or not given major attention. 2. Focusing on breathing – streamlines it. Slowly after 5 mins, you will notice you are breathing deeper and longer.

This in turn gets you into something called ‘Alpha brain waves‘ – which is a very productive place to be. In that place your resisting guard would be let down and since you already placed your goals and objectives in your mental state prior (through daily goal setting etc) these would be easily conveyed to your Vibrational being which creates actions, ideas and behaviors in you which create your reality.

So, the meditation actually is doing a lot of things under the hood without our knowledge.

3. 21 day habit swap: In his book Psycho-Cybernetics – Dr.Maxwell Maltz originally talked about this 21 day theory. Basically Dr.Maltz was dealing with people who had their body parts removed for various reasons. Some people who lost their arm would still feel pain in it, even though there was no arm. And it usually took 21 days for patients’ body to get over the pain and come to an understanding of new reality. This vital info could be used to form new habits and change how we view and create reality.

Once you set goals – you could start working on them and trying to be consistent for at least 21 days. Most of the time it works. After 21 days, it would become natural for you to work on the goals & tasks.

4. 68 seconds rule: I have no idea why that number – but it’s like number 42 – the meaning of life. If you can manage to do this, it could create some wonderful results. Basically it goes like this – any thought, strongly held for 68 seconds would kick off major changes in your reality. My logical mind doesn’t understand why? I have no data on it – but it has worked for me in various occasions.

So, that’s my understanding of this concept of Manifestation and some strategies involved. I am willing to look at any other info you have to offer to me. But in gist it’s how I understand and it has been working like that for quite some time for me. Please remember – no theory is correct or accurate. We are all blind men groping the Elephant!

Be easy on yourself, play with different methods and most important of all – enjoy the ride, even if it means you are scared of Public Speaking.

15 minutes of Meditation

Recently, I have started to consistently meditate for 15 minutes every morning. I do miss those good old days where I used to meditate for an hour, now a days stuck between Conference calls and morning emails – it has become more of a luxury. So, I decided a new practice of just 15 minutes every day after I take my shower. There are many many ways you can meditate – but the one I follow is simple process of watching my breath. Here are some things I found out and wanted to share with everyone.

Expect roadblocks – it’s like the whole world is conspiring against you to stop you from meditating. You will have a work emergency, someone calls and something obviously breaks down.
Expect Physical uncomfortableness – Your chin would itch. You might fart. Your stomach would grumble etc. Please don’t try to stop it. Just become aware of it.
Expect Crazy thoughts – in like 5 minutes you will start to feel like, you have been meditating for 15 years. You would be like “Enough Already”
Expect random and crazy thoughts – It’s like your mind (actually ego) gets trapped in a box and starts to throw around all those fears, crazy thoughts etc towards you. Don’t panic. Just come back to your meditation, by bringing your focus back to your breath.
Perfection – This is the single most reason why I stopped meditating in the past. I was like, if I can’t be perfect and meditate for 1 hour – I don’t want to do it for 15 mins. There is no logic behind that thinking. Except that my Ego has trapped me into this paradox where I want to meditate, but because of my perfect scenario not available to me I refuse to do it.
Failure – There is no failure. It’s a mental construct. You can’t fail at this. No one is watching you. No judgment. There is not single way to fail at this. However if you do it consistently, you will get better and better at focusing.

This is what I have observed once I start to be consistent in it:

I am more poised during the day
There is this point of view, which is hard to explain but easy to experience – which gives you an ability to watch yourself.
I started noticing stuff which I never did. My beliefs, values. Most importantly my thoughts.
You would get this Big Picture view of anything where it becomes easy for one to see where all this fits in, in the big picture.
All the trivialities sort of start to fall off.

I am no expert at this, but just 15 minutes of my day affects so many hours of my waking life. That’s all I know and that’s all I want to do at this time. I won’t let Perfection stop me from being good.

Ignorance and Fear

As I was driving back home, I got a moment to ponder on ignorance and fear. I was thinking about one of the idea I have been toying around with, in the past 1 year. I am not sure what is stopping me from going ahead and flushing out the details and get that idea out, but I cannot make myself do anything about it so far. I have happened to discuss with my friends about the idea and they all think it’s a great idea and I personally believe that it’s a great one too. As I thought about it, two things crystallized for me.

Ignorance and Fear. I think both Ignorance and Fear are cyclically connected. Like a catch-22 situation. I think ignorance leads to fear and more fear leads to more ignorance. It’s a hard cycle to break. Most of it is happening without my serious thinking of it. Only today in the context of my idea was I able to see how they are connected.

My ignorance about certain things – Flex, iPhone development, Erlang, Amazon Web Services etc has made me not even attempt to take my first step towards this idea. I am a perfectionist and it’s a pain in the butt for any perfectionist to take a tiny imperfect step. Add to that years and years of self-flagellation you get a very acute case of self-doubter and highly self-crtitical judger. I realized as I sat through the slow moving traffic that my ignorance about certain “supposed” things has created a fear in me. The fear which freezes me in my location. Sangita, long time back, mentioned from her Somatics class that there are 5 ways we react to trauma/fear.

fight
flight
freeze
appease
dis-associate

I think I have done almost all of them on that list in my life, but the most popular one seems to be ‘freeze’. So, ignorance creates fear which freezes me there by contributing to the ignorance.

I realized that there are couple of things I can do to break this cycle. Believe it or not, it’s another cycle albeit an empowering one. I think before I craft this cycle I need to make one strong assumption. And that is – “It’s a friendly Universe out there”. Einstein said it long time back. Anyhow, here is what I think would break the cycle.

Little action is a great replacement for Ignorance. Instead of thinking/believing that “Knowledge” is the response to Ignorance, I think the better response to ignorance is ‘small action steps’. I think, all my life the way I have learned is by making mistakes. Only that I have never been aware of it. My first job was where I had to prove by building a web application in 15 days in a totally new technology. Start to end. I had no clue how I am going to do it, but all I knew was I am going to do it and I did it. As I moved along, the pieces fell in their places. This is nothing new I am mentioning but it’s an age old way of learning things through tinkering, trial and error.

But I guess what happened over the past few years is that I happen to fall into the trap of disdaining trial and error and prefer erudition. Which is not bad, but for who I am it’s not the right way. By making myself believe that learning/knowing everything before I proceed, has put me in a situation where I am freezing without moving on with my idea. So, now I have realized that ‘small action steps’ are far better supplement for Ignorance than heavy dosages of knowledge.

The second part of the cycle is forgiveness, patience, end result and big picture. This happens to be the antidote for the ‘fear’ part of the earlier deadly cycle. Obviously, through trial and error, through ‘ready-fire-aim’ method I am going to burn myself many places. But, if I keep the end result and the big picture in mind then I won’t allow the fear of failure to freeze me. To make this happen I also have to be more forgiving of myself and my mistakes. I know Freud taught us to blame it on our parents as to why we grow up to be like this. Parents commit their own mistakes with parenting as with any other things, but I think once you have that awareness of how our childhood can affect our adulthood – we should be bigger enough to be able to take a plunge and become what we aspire to be. Anyhow, I am blabbering. But to make the story short, I believe remembering the big picture and being gentle with myself will help me to get rid of the fear.

Once this cycle is in place, the change won’t be overnight. But it sure will come. As I type this, I can sense a great calm in my heart which is a good sign. I am going to take my first tiny little step as soon as I end this post.

Vibrational Beings

I have varied interests and I read a lot of literature on the stuff I like. I like, other than computer science, Physics, Quantum Physics, Mathematics, Spirituality, Philosophy, Human behaviour, Human Psychology, Scientific History, Data Mining, Visualization etc. At any given time I am reading a bunch of books that mould my mind in various directions. At this time I am obsessed with an idea of how we are all ‘Vibrational Beings’.

This sounds new-age-ey, so please bear with me. I believe that we are all vibrational beings. Like layers of onions, we are engulfed within various beings, of which the most apparent one is Physical. Everything in this Universe has a vibration to it. If you dig deep into matter, it’s nothing but a bunch of quantum stuff loosely coupled and vibrating at a very high speed. If you look around you, you will see visible, living world. A world which could be perceived with our 5 senses. Based upon which we build our beliefs, thoughts and mental models. I believe that we have 4 layers in our beings.

Vibrational
Feeling
Mental
Physical

As always, I think visually and I am very comfortable explaining things visually. Here is how I believe it’s structured.

4 Layers of Being

There are 2 aspects to it. First, Internal – meaning the things that happen within the person. External meaning – things that happen outside of the person/being. Here is how I think it’s laid out.

1. Physical Being – This is the default visible being you see around. This is the action seeking person we interact with. The outcome of this being in the external world is – actions, activities, decisions etc

2. Mental Being – This is the being that gets attacked a lot. Because this is the being that creates the separation. This is the level at which the so called ‘EGO’ lives. This level, we have an image of ourselves as well as others. We have mental model of the world and all our beliefs are stored at this level. Access to memory at this level is very high. If you draw parallels to computer, this being has access to memory on a magnetic Hard disk. Everything gets stored, but you will have to search to retrieve it. This being is also responsible for the rich imagination and visualization. The outcome of this being in the external world is – Thoughts, ideas etc.

3. Feelings Being – This is the being who feels things. Anger, frustration, love, lust, mercy, good feelings, bad feelings are all created and live here. This being also has access to memory, but if you think in terms of computers again – the kind of access this being has to memory is like ‘Solid State Hard Disk’. Meaning, it’s smaller but very powerful and doesn’t take much time to retrieve it. You will always be able to recall the feelings you had when you had your fist kiss. You don’t need to think about it. The outcome of this being in the external world is – Emotions.

4. Vibrational Being – This is the core of all. This being is what we actually are. At this level, nothing is different from the individual being. Everything and everyone is same when it comes to vibrational beings. This is the being that gets referred to as soul, atma, consciousness, Godness etc. This is who we all are. Unfortunately, there is no external representation of this being in the external world. How can it be? If everything is one, there is no external world at all. And that’s what causes a lot of confusion in our lives. This being is often mistaken as ‘Feelings being’ as that’s the closest to it, but they both are not one and the same.

All the practices we do in the name of religion, God, Spirituality are all pathways to realize or touch this vibrational being within us. Good deeds, Good thoughts, Meditation, Love etc are all a pathway to get access to this Vibrational being.

Well that’s theory, now how can you use this knowledge? If you look closely – Feelings are closest to this vibrational being and there is no other simple way to get access to it. Say, for example – you are looking for a new job. You would prepare your resume – that’s physical. You would prepare for the interview questions that’s mental. Various new age gurus suggest you to visualize the outcome, or feel the feelings. That’s true and correct. In addition to both physical & mental action – you need to be there feelings wise too. That’s how you land that job.

Feelings are the only way you can have access to the Vibrational being. Once you change the vibration of that being through a mix of Emotions, Thoughts & Actions – you will sync with whatever you are looking for in vibration. This sounds easy, but hard to do because – everything in our world happens at Physical & Mental level. So, many distractions and so much work to do. A part of it is also our beliefs which we hold them as true. We associate ourselves with the egoistic self-image we create of ourselves. It took us our lifetime to get here, and it will take some more time to get where we actually want to be. But, having a map of things always helps. This is my map which I use to look at things when I am in doubt. This is what bring me clarity to some extent.

Role of Creativity in Consciousness

It’s been a long time I have blogged and I have been wanting to blog about this topic for a long time. Recently Lynn came up with an idea of having our own household TED talks. So, last Friday I did a TED talk on this topic and it gave me an opportunity to gather all my ideas in one place. I also uploaded a PDF of that talk in the end of this post.

To start with I have 3 basic theories that intertwine to form this grand picture.

Quantum Physics, NLP Theory
Thinking in genenral, Creativity Frameworks
Creation Theory (Not the Church one)

Let’s look at each of them:

Theory # 1: Quantum Physics

It’s a very well known fact that once we break down and dig deep into physical things, there a whole new world out there. Take a strongest microscope and take a deep look, the world within things is totally different. It’s not like the way it has been described – a planetary system. That’s classical physics take on it. Quantum physics says that at a quantum level, things are made of something called “Quanta”. This Qauanta is not a thing, but it’s a energy packet.

In other words this ‘Energy Packet’ is also called ‘Possibility Packet’. Meaning, it’s a proven thing in Quantum physics that at any given time we can only measure one thing of a Quanta. Either ‘Location’ or ‘Speed’. It means that if I go out to find the speed of a Quanta that’s exactly I would find. If I seek location, that’s exactly what I would get. But say, I would want to know at a given time where quanta is at a given time and what is it’s speed – it’s not possible. Think about it. The cop need only find out your speed to check if your are speeding. You just need to find out where your car is parked in a parking lot. You cannot figure out both at the same time.

So this leads us to the fact that we are somehow getting what we are intending for. It means that at quantum level, these energy packets – quanta give us what we seek/intent. Meaning we pre-destine the possibility of what these quanta would be. Meaning we choose what these quanta would be. That is the reason why these are also called ‘Possibility Packets’.

Now, hold that thought and zoom out to regular physicality level. This draws us to conclude that our thoughts basically affect the possibility of certain thing we are seeking. Our thoughts are in turn tied up with our behaviors, habits etc. In other words, what we observe has direct relation to what we intend or looking for.

Remember that, we are going to recall that again later.

Matter Vs. Energy

Let’s talk about matter and energy for a short time. We are used to seeing matter around us all the time. We also see energy in various forms – electrical, chemical(batteries). Long time back Einstein proved with his very popular equation:

E = mc²

In other words energy could be equated with matter with something else. Basically telling us that energy and matter are same things in different forms.

Rehash – Top down approach:

Let’s rehash what we have learned and try to make a connection.

We know that energy and matter are same
If we dug deep into matter(or energy) we would find it filled with possibility packets
These packets behave according to the intention of the Observer
More importantly, the observer can totally change the possibility packets to change by changing the thoughts.

That’s good enough about Theory # 1. Let’s take a look at the next one.

Thoery # 2: Thinking and Creativity Tools

Our thinking consists of 2 components:

Perception
Logic

We all tend to equate logic with thinking. When we refer to thinking, we unanimously tend to think of logic. The logic would say that Obama got enough super delegates to become a democratic candidate. We are obsessed with logic. So much that we totally ignore the ‘Perception’ part and just straight out jump to logic. What we forget is ‘Perception’ is what gives fodder for ‘Logic’ to work on. Taking the Obama example, if we look at perceptions – it would mean that for the first time in history an African American could be a President of America. It’s a powerful thing. You cannot deduct that through logic. You need perception for that.

A lot of daily problems we come across are mostly to do with ‘Perception Errors’ rather than ‘Logical Errors’. We have mastered the logical part of our thinking. So much so that, we can either give it to the computer to figure it out or outsource it to figure it out. Perception is what makes us more humane.

So, how can I be more creative?

If you think about it – Creativity is nothing more than coming up with more options, choices, solutions. So, generally if you expand your perception –> you expand the input –> there by you give more choices to work on at logical level –> there by you get more outcomes, more options and more optimal solutions.

You can use many perception expanding tools. One of the popular one is Edward de Bono’s Six thinking hats.

Let’s check out next theory.

Theory # 3: Basic creation theory (not the one Church is proposing)

This involves all the new age gurus. This is more spiritual and involves a lot of teachers who have been talking and spreading knowledge about this. For example – The Secret.

We usually have 60,000 thoughts per day. And recall from Theory # 1 that our thoughts change possibilities. So, imagine each thought is altering some possibility. Meaning we have about 60,000 alterations going on in our one day at Quantum level.

How in the hell do I manage those 60,000 alterations?

Welcome Feelings.

One feeling is worth a thousand thoughts!

We can keep those 60,000 thoughts in check with the help of feelings.

Remember what we learned in Theory # 1. Our thoughts alter possibilities –> meaning, our thoughts alter or can also create possibilities –> meaning, our thoughts can create matter or energy (Thanks Einstein)

Let’s take a visual representation:

Here are our thoughts:

This is how Feelings Orchestrate thoughts:

It’s time to mix all these 3 theories and see what come up. Before we do that, let’s note the key points.

Observer changes possibility
Creativity enhances perception
Perception is at a thought level
Feelings affect multiple thoughts
Observer have feelings

The Big Picture is:

So, if you look at it – creativity plays a very important role in our lives. At a sub-conscious level it helps us to perceive more options and there by helps us create the life we want.

Here is the Role of Creativity in Consciousness slides in PDF format.

Why do I like to create Software?

I am looking for a job right now. I have had couple of discussions with some recruiters, companies in my first week here. A couple of people asked me a very interesting question – “Why do I like to create/write software?” or in other words, why do I like to do what I do? I knew the answer to the question to some extent, but I realized that I need to look deeper to get to more core reasons. So I did my bit – journaled, meditated etc and I think now I have good enough reasons to blog about it.

So, here we go – the list of reasons “Why do I like to create Software?“.

5. Creative Canvas: Like for a painter who plays within his canvas area, like for a sculptor who dabbles with his chisel and carve out the image from stone, Software environment gives me a creative play ground where I can test out my ideas. It’s the playground for my creative self to express itself. I write programs that crash and then I make them work and once they are working fine, I make them better. I talk to myself, I try to find inspiration, I read, I discuss, I think deep until I find a solution to my problem at hand within this area of canvas. It fulfills my creative needs and gives me a satisfaction of I created something new.

4. Problem Solving: Software is a very specific instance of problem solving. In this area I can apply my problem solving skills which are generic to the context of software. “Breaking it down”, “Problem re-statement”etc problem solving tools can equally be applied to Software and the outcome or result of those techniques is most of the time immediate. So, not only it’s sharpens my problem solving skills but it provides feedback and lets me improve my skills in that area.

3. Fun: Let’s me just admit, if it weren’t fun I would have never been in Software field at all. This process of taking up a problem or task, thinking about it, applying my creativity to it, trying out a solution, gathering feedback, re-trying the solution, learning, perfecting the solution – is an immensely gratifying as well as a fun filled process. I always imagine myself as a 5 year old kid with a paint brush, having fun with what I am doing. What I create may not solve world hunger, but it’s unique to me, it came from me, it’s an identity for me and it gives me a perspective of where I stand out in this world.

2. Interaction: It’s not any fun to write software inside an Igloo. It’s no fun to write software where I use the same solution again and again. Having other people who are also writing software around me and interacting with them makes it worthy. I realized (about myself) that my learning accelerates when I have a very quality technical interaction with other quality software people. Learning by reading, practicing comes next. Interacting, discussing, talking it loud about any software topic with others is such a creative process. It enhances my point of views and makes me a better software developer. I take back all those learning and try to adopt them in my daily programming.

1. Greater Good: This is a little tricky to explain. I would love to be a part of team which is solving world’s biggest problems – like poverty, global warming etc. But I also understand my position and purpose in life. So, I try to look at the work I do and think of what ‘need’, is my software fulfilling?. I am not big on bashing corporates for the sake of non-profits. It would be silly to do that. A lot of Open source zealots do like to bash anything Microsoft. I think it’s silly to do that too. When you look at the bigger picture, it’s the Ying and Yang.

I try to look at whether my software is meeting the required needs in the best possible way or not. That itself is inspiring to me. Yes, my software doesn’t help global leaders to take preventive actions on eradicating poverty (yet!), but I am happy that it solves a very tricky business process and make my client’s life as easy as clicking a button (so far!). I would love to solve big problems but I always try to see, irrespective of how big or small the issue at hand is, whether what I am doing is aligned to the needs of my client. That’s greater good for me.

As I was typing this, I got a great feeling of Deja Vu. I realized that almost all the above reasons I mentioned fall in the categories/bucket of what Maslow has proposed long time back. So, I checked Maslow’ hierarchy of needs and realized how most of the reasons why I create software fit into Maslow’ hierarchy beautifully.

Stage Actors Vs. Backstage Crew

The other day I was having a chat with one of the very bright colleagues of mine. He mentioned something that stuck with me and kind gave me a big picture of what I have been thinking of. He mentioned about how on a broader scale job skills are divided. I am currently looking for job and also trying to get into a career which not only would be challenging but also deeply meaningful to me. What he mentioned kinda gave me a picture of what I should be looking for in an Ideal Job. Ok, here is the scoop on the story.

There are 2 kinds of job skills – to make it more analogous, let’s consider Theater performances. You have people who perform various roles on the stage and then there is a whole crew which makes the show happen behind the scenes. Now if we generalize we can cast them in basically 2 groups(very broad).

Stage actors
Backstage crew

So, in the area of job skills – Stage actors are the ones that deal basically with one idea – ‘CRUDding on the client data‘(TM). All these guys do is to take the content which gets created or exists and show it to client in various ways so that it’s easy for the client to modify and maintain the data. Irrespective of job descriptions and technology used almost all of the people in this bucket(Stage Actors) do this perennial task. Your American Idol in this area would be DHH

Backstage crew are the ones who deal with ‘In-Memory computation‘. These are the people who pull the strings (or threads, or processes). These are the experts of code optimizations and innovative algorithm designers. These people make the machine do all the grunt work using automation and make it work the way they want it to be. Your American Idol in this area would be ZSFA

A simple example would be of Facebook. When it started, Facebook is nothing but a bunch of PHP files and MySQL database. The stage actors did a great job of making it popular, but then when it started to have millions of page hits – this actually made the expert backstage crew to step in and write those smart programs that can deal with those millions of hits. In the early stage the backstage crew was present too but their role was not that prominent, in the later stage the stage actors are still there but their role has become one of the important role, not just the only important role.

Serendipity again I guess, it so happened the day we talked about this – Steve Yegge came out with his stunning post of ‘Get that job at Google‘. If you carefully analyze what he says or the skill set he is looking for, he is actually referring to the back stage crew guys.

So what can I do to advance my career of 7+ years which I spent in ‘CRUDding with client data’? I took the clue from Steve and got myself 2 books.

As I go through these books, I realize they have a deep learning curve and probably it’s a good thing. You just don’t get to become a stage director (part of backstage crew) over night. I am going to invest my time and energy and see where it goes. I already enjoyed couple of cool moments when I try to implement some of the ideas in those books in Ruby code.

Also I have decided to learn Erlang. I think that learning a functional language actually twists my brain cells in such a way that I would end up being more creative and start to think about computation in very different terms. In addition to that I am going ahead with Flex learning too. The reason why I love Flex is that it gives super wings to my programming imagination. I can actually write Actionscript code and generate a visual way of saying things.

My immediate idea would be take for example – take binary search, implement it in Ruby or Erlang and then write a program in Flex which would visually follow, in slow motion how binary search works and shows it in the browser for the user! Now that’s what I call complete learning.

Note: The credit goes to Ratheesh for discussing with me the pattern he saw. I added in more of my flavor to it.

Tipping point of Consciousness

I know this for sure, anyone who loves doing something very passionately is at some level addicted to it. I have experienced it personally. I think every human being has enough potential in him/her to achieve ‘God/Conscious/Suchness/Sacredness’. How we choose to do it is very different and what we choose to call it also different. After thinking a lot about it, I have realized that reaching this Conscious state also has a tipping point.

Every one picks their own path as to how to reach it. But in my experience it has usually been following one standard path. When I say picking up your own path, it could be anything – any skill which you already have or in the process of acquiring. The most famous path in reaching Consciousness is ‘Meditation’, but if you think about it – meditation would enable you into getting into the feeling of Consciousness and this is the same state you might achieve doing any other activity very deeply. Let me explain with an example.

I am going to talk about the skill I am aware of – Programming. There are some people who program for the sake of programming and the very joy they derieve out of it. I am one of those. I love to write good programs and sometimes when I am programming, I reach a stage where my awareness peaks and I write some very beautiful code. Later when I look at it, I get really surprised that it’s me who typed those lines. So what exactly happens? I think when I hit the tipping point of Consciousness I suddenly transcend my tool, path – programming in this case and I reach that awareness level where I inherently know what to type without any memory, effort etc.

I am not just making this up. This is the single most feeling I always struggle for every time I program. This is the single most feeling I want to feel again and again and I am so addicted to feel this again that I look for new ways of learning new computer languages and try to reach that tipping point.

If you pause for a moment and ponder on it, I am sure everyone will remember an instance where they had this kind of feeling. A swimmer may reach a stage in swimming that he no longer follows any swimming technique but becomes one with the water. A painter would reach a point where he is no longer thinking about his painting, but has merged with the painting and what his hand might be doing is just detail. A teacher, reader, cyclist, nature lover, speaker, skier, hiker and the most popular one ‘Yogi’ – all these people are seeking this unique feeling again and again in their respective methods.

There are couple of things to note here though:

1. Not all of them may call it Consciousness and not many of them will be aware that they are seeking that feeling again and again. Some may call it ‘Flow’ state. Some may call it deep concentration.

2. Like I said, people follow their own respective path for this feeling. So, if you think about it – the very idea of path is to transcend the path. The very idea of programming is to end programming, the very idea of art is to end the art. I am not drunk to say those words, neither am I confused – the nature of Consciousness is hidden in paradoxes and it’s hard to explain verbally. So think about it a little deep and you will understand. Even Zen has an idea called ‘artless art’ – meaning where in Japan, art(calligraphy) is used by many Zen masters, not because it looks cool but they are actually mastering the art of tipping to the other side using art form. To reach the ‘artless art’.

3. We have always heard about reports on how we use only 10% of our minds. Did you ever wonder what happens if one uses 20%? 40%? 90%? 100%? I think I have a theory here. I think when you use 100% of your mind, that’s when you transcend mind. That’s when you tip from mind into Consciousness. Then it becomes clear to the person that the whole idea of having and using a mind is actually to end it. Considering that Consciousness is something we are all after in some form or the other.

Tipping point of Consciousness

4. Given these things, I think it’s not easy to reach that tipping point. Like in the diagram, once you start any activity (like painting, meditation, programming etc) you will have to go through ‘Low Point’. This is where the Nature tests you whether you actually love the activity you started (Check The Monk who sold his Ferrari for more on this) But once you cross this hurdle, as time passes and as you practice more and more you are bound to hit a tipping point. Once you taste it, you are never coming back. You will go through more effort again and again to get that feeling.

In my case so far I have been able experience something profound in programming and meditation.

Head above the water

Couple of days back I was having a chat with our company’s CEO. Like all CEOs’ he is a very sweet guy and a total visionary. He loves his baby and he has good intentions for it. But as it’s the norm with all visionaries, they lack the pragmatic side (to be honest I am one of those too). Even though we talked about impossible things, it was good to see someone imagining beyond the day to day troubles and issues. We were talking about the company and the difficult phase it’s going through. I don’t know how but somehow we got to talk about some of the issues I have been facing personally. It was a good talk and something he said during the talk stuck with me. He said, “Akbar, no matter what happens, you have keep your head above the water. A lot of people who talk to me are totally obsessed with the problem they have and it makes them not to see beyond the problem where the solution may lie”.

Now I have heard the term “Keep your head above the water” a lot many times in my life. I have never personally used it anywhere, but this got me into thinking. I realized how true the analogy is and it triggered in me a lot of things to ponder up on. Here are some of them…

1. Couple of months back when me and Sang went to Goa – on a crowded beach we met a couple from Bangalore. These people were rich and held very high positions in some top multinational companies. We became good friends. As we were enjoying the water, the lady suddenly started to yell. She was drowning – we have gotten too far into the sea. Her initial reaction was to hold on to Sangita. As she panicked, she started to push Sang down and try to climb on top of her. Poor Sangita started to wriggle and was trying to escape. In all this, everyone around us were shouting at the lady – “Just keep your head above the water”.

As for me, I don’t know how to swim (yet – YMCA, here I come for my summer swimming lessons!). I couldn’t do anything but to try to run away from the drowning people as I have realized that Bacardi coupled with not being able to feel the ground underneath your feet is one bad situation. Later when me and Sangita were playing in water, as Sang tried to teach me how to swim – she mentioned the most important thing – Keep your head above the water when I feel like I am drowning and not to panic as the waves will push me back to the banks.

2. We do have a tendency to wrap our heads around the ‘most current problem’ that bugs us. We just can’t stop thinking about it. Nothing comes to mind. But it’s very hard to realize that this worrying is not going to get us anywhere. This is a predominant ‘belief system’ in my household in India. The belief is – by worrying more about the problem you might actually make it go away. But it’s not gonna go away. The way to get around or above the problem is to raise our awareness beyond the problem. In other terms keep your head above those stinking problems. This reminds me of Einstein’s quote –

” The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.” – Albert Einstein.

There are two aspects to this quote –

We have created the problem. This is a shocker to a lot of people. All of us, almost all of us tend to believe that the problems we encounter are created by something outside of us (I don’t blame them for thinking like that as it’s a direct influence of mind’s dualistic nature of thinking – oops that’s another blog post). So first thing is to own the problem. To admit that we somehow let that in. This brings in responsibility into the system and actually inspires us to think in different ways to solve the problem.
This is the keeping the head above the water aspect – As we ponder on solutions to our problems, it’s only by thinking with an awareness that is ‘above the problem level’ are we going to get to any solution. So, keeping my head above all the problems, issues and tasks I have – empowers me a lot and inspires me to find creative solutions.

3. So, this would make us wonder – How the hell do we keep our head above the water? I for sure don’t know yet how to do it in actual swimming. But how to do in actual life situation – I might have a clue. It dawned to me during one of our very cool and important discussions with our friends Lisa and Sarah. We were having our breakfast and continuing the previous night’s spiritual discussion. Sarah has this ability to question everything that comes in to her consciousness. This led to me thinking and added with the Eisntein’s quote – may be, may be by asking right questions we can raise our awareness to a higher level. A level where we can see all our problems and how they are affecting us. Well this is nothing but the process of introspection. But now I believe, by asking right questions and questioning our beliefs and assumptions about the problem at hand we can half solve the problem. The rest of it will definitely raise our awareness a.k.a keeping our heads above water. This introspection, this questioning is one way of finding solutions to our day to day vagaries.

That’s what I think and it has worked for me so far. Oh, btw that lady didn’t drown. Some hot shot white dude came to her rescue and saved her life. As for her husband – he spent the next 1 hour in water just to avoid his freaked out wife!