Ennui and Meaning

We all want to succeed in life. One may measure it with different yardstick, nevertheless most of us want success. And in the pursuit of success we may miss life itself. In “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Viktor Frankl says 

“Don’t aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen and same holds for success; you have to let it happen by not caring about it” 

If success can not itself be a goal, what else should it be? That goal, that ultimate purpose or the meaning of existence itself is not a single answer to a simple question. It’s a journey. Its life itself. 

Existential philosophers would say life is inherently meaningless. If we look at the universe, long long time from now, it would achieve a cold equilibrium where nothing more could happen and life could not exist. Ultimately even universe is going to cease to exist. So the whole thing actually sounds meaningless. Isn’t it depressing to hear?   But we are here and now and can realize all these cosmos and the vibrant life that continuously recycles star dust. I think this paradox itself is immensely beautiful and provides countless opportunities to be amazed and to find meaning for our existence. Finding the meaning uplifts an ordinary life to an extraordinary one. Lack of meaning makes life mediocre if not depressing. That mediocrity creates ennui; the existential despair. Everyone experiences it now and then. Most come out of it. But sometimes, we may be going through a long phase of ennui unknowingly. It is important to pause and ask as the existential question “what am I doing?” and “what is my ultimate purpose?”. Answering these questions sincerely is difficult. The people of Okinawa tribe in Japan call the answer as their “Ikigai” - meaning “what makes one get in the morning?” One's Ikigai will be ‘what one is really good at, one wants to do, the world needs most and pays one sufficiently’. Having that Ikigai makes the Okinawa tribe to be happier and live longer than any other tribe.

In ‘Good to Great’, Jim Collins will introduce the concept of Bhag, Big Hairy Audacious Goal. It is for good companies that want to become great. I think that concept is applicable for individuals as well. Bhag is almost similar to Ikigai. It is what one is good at, one is passionate about and one would be paid well. Those companies that found their Bhag and went after it single mindedly were empirically proven to return order of magnitude higher returns to the stockholders compared to good companies that wander without a Bhag.

Both the concept of Bhag and Ikigai are applicable equally to self as well as organizations. Meaning of the existence for self and organizations should be transcending the monetary scale of success, as Viktor Frankl says. At the same time the ultimate purpose has to be placed in the context of the inherently meaninglessness of the whole thing. Then one can laugh at life as well whenever we feel so.

Back to basics

It is the results season. Kids and parents are talking about what they have scored and which college to study next and how much money its going to cost. Lots of courses are talked about. But one thing I am very sure about is no parent or kid is talking about studying philosophy as a course. I am not even sure if BA philosophy is even offered as a degree course in some college. 

We want results and now. Job and immediately after degree. Profit and right after one starts of business. When I read about "First Principles Approach" I just fell in love with that concept. One can say it's a fancy way of saying "Ask Why", which it kind of is.  Nevertheless when we look at the world from a "First Principles" point of view it gives a completely different meaning to even mundane things . Your decisions become much more clear. It also shows how people are completely unable to do simple reasoning on their every day decisions or when they take a political position. Don't get me wrong, this is not hubris. Most people would take a much better decision than me, but I am also certain most people don't have solid reasoning on why they take a particular decision. Social and empirical rules influence our decisions a lot or at least help to get to one quickly. But the problem is that decisions that doesn't have solid reasoning also hampers the society and self in making progress. Irrationality creeps in and costs a lot of money, time, opportunities and creates avoidable problems. I think that's why studying philosophy will train the society to reason right and wrong, ethics and morals, instead of just taking deciding from empirical formulas.

I was extremely glad when I saw the an assignment on Kantian and Utilitarian approaches to ethics in our Information Systems course. I was hoping that we would have detailed discussion. But due to lack of time and probably also due to our aversion of anything philosophy we did not delve into the first principles of ethics of privacy policies of IT companies in our class. I would have enjoyed that session.

I am kind of digressing; it's getting late and you are losing interest. My argument is that we think education and learning is a way to get a job or advance our career or improve the profit as a business. I think it is wrong and counter productive. We need to go back to basics, learn the first principles, and have a philosophical construct. Then one would learn to make better decisions and that will help him/her with better jobs, advance career and help improve profit of their organizations.

I am looking forward to a day when Logic and Categorical imperative is taught in Kindergarten and beyond.

Personality Types

I think it was in 2008. In a two days corporate training program I took the MBTI(Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) test. We had extensive lecture and group work after the test to understand the dichotomies and the personality types. I couldn't recollect now the exact type I classified into. But I do remember that what I got from the test and what I felt about myself pretty much matched except for one dichotomy. The whole program was fun and I vividly remember some of the exercises.

Cut to 2019, in the OB class we had a lecture on Self-Awareness, Social Awareness and as part of that we took the MBTI again. What was striking to me was that this time I have got kind of middle score in three of the dichotomies and in the dichotomy for which the test indicates a strong preference, I think my nature tends to be the other one. Obviously the test has its limitation and I do not think we can bucket so many billion folks into just 16 categories accurately.

But, I do like this exercise. It is a way of looking at and trying to understand self and others. The most important learning though is that personalities are just different types and there is nothing good or bad in itself.  This is applicable for self and for others. So, when dealing with others we can avoid judgements & stereotypes, better understand their point of view and appreciate their contributions.

The actual MBTI test is quite costly, but there are many free equivalent tests. This time I took the one at - http://www.humanmetrics.com/personality

If you want to understand what a given personality type means - check this out https://www.16personalities.com/

Consistency

Being consistent is great quality, evidently the one I lack, especially when it comes to blogging. Though I have not posted for a loooong time, I always wanted to write. I think two things came in between. Having a twitter account(You really don't want to check that out.), it is always tempting to tweet out any thing one wants to say out loud. Once the tweet is out there is no more motivation to write a long post. Second, somewhere in between everything looses their meaning. My old posts look so ridiculous and I am little embarrassed to read them now. 

But hey...didn't we read somewhere that finding the meaning from the meaningless is what the meaning of life(Ok! I just made that up). Also I think ability to laugh at oneself is a gift. So I am going to leave all the old embarrassing posts in all my blogs not deleted. Though some of the draft ones will be surely deleted. They were so bad I did not have heart to publish them at that time itself :)

Thanks to Prof. Viji, I am reviving this blog. I will be posting random stuff in addition to things on my Executive MBA classes at IIT Chennai.

HTML5 : Sencha's Fastbook

When Zuck said HTML5 is not ready yet, many took it as a word of God and turned away from HTML5 to native SDK for mobile application development. Couple of days back Sencha brought the focus back into HTML5 with their new HTML5 based clone of facebook's official app . "So, when Mark Zuckerberg said HTML5 wasn't ready, we took a little offense to the comment." they wrote in their blog The Making of Fastbook: An HTML5 Love Story 

In my opinion both Zuck and Sencha could be right. As Sencha have actually demonstrated, it probably is quite possible to develop responsive applications using HTML5. At the same time it is also true that it depends a lot on the developers skill set. By HTML5 they actually refer to the JavaScript and when trying to develop rich applications using Java Script you end up creating a lot of low level code. On top of it the tooling for HTML5/Java Script is not as mature as it is for say native SDKs or even Adobe Flex/Flash. This makes HTML5 development time consuming and complicated. 

The main stream programming world would  probably prefer native SDKs whenever they can and they have to provide rich experience to users. HTML5 based applications will be the poor cousins and will be the secondary choice. The user experience of HTML5 based applications will be behind native applications.

At the same time, native applications have their own issues like application discovery,  code updates and they are discussed here and here . I think the future is probably in mobile web where web sites(applications) in mobile devices provide an experience similar to native mobile apps. And for that to happen, HTML5 is must.

Markerboard.in An Online Store for White Marker Boards

We are happy to announce that Markerboard.in , an interesting project we have been working on for a customer has gone into beta. It is an online store for buying white marker boards and similar items. It is probably a first of its kind in India :). We have been working on this project for Corporate Concepts based out of Chennai, India. Corporate concepts is a leading manufacturer and distributor of White Marker Boards. They have a big presence in South India. And this online initiative is part of their strategy to reach out markets in North India and abroad.

You may be wondering if this is a viable online business. However, Corporate Concepts and even we are bullish about the possibilities. This is a product needed widely across India by schools, colleges, institutions and even start-up companies. However not many stores could stock this locally because it is not a mass market product. Hence the whole searching and ordering process is time consuming and it happens pretty much over phone. An online store will make it easy for customers to browse through the product catalog easily and order them quickly. Markerboard.in will be offering free shipping across India and wide variety of payment options(Credit Card option is coming soon)

Currently Markerboard.in is in beta and the full launch is expected within a month. Even as an individual, you can check the site out as a white marker board will be a great productivity tool at home or at office. And if you register now, you will get some awesome discounts during the launch and probably will get an invite for the launch party :)

And we are definitely interested in hearing your views and feedback. If you have any please let me know.

Another One

It is a shame that I am keeping this space not updated. Shame on me. I can give excuses like I am busy..blah blah. A busy man is one who finds time for everything. I am a lazy one...That's a criminal mistake.
The economy is in a whole lot of trouble and its the best time to be in a cozy job rather than mucking around crazy thoughts and uncertain things. But I am already in neck deep, and I am going to enjoy this.
We closed last year reasonably OK, but that elusive break through has been just that. And as it is enough(or already late) testing water we are diving head first into deep waters by taking on some wild ideas.
We will keep you posted. We released couple of small android apps[Quizzen and Go! Chennai] into market. We are continuing to work in improving these apps.
Lot more stuff to come keep an eye on this page if you want to see what we are doing. And I too promise to come back here frequently.