Random Note - Why Write, Just Type!

These days the only time I wield the pen is to sign cheques!!

I had quite a lousy hand-writing which affected quite a few grades in school and college! In fact, I am surprised how I ever passed some of my engineering papers. By the time I finished scribbling on the last ream of paper, it was illegible to even me!!

Anyways am happy, I don't have to wield the pen any more. On MS Word, finally I have caught up with some of my more calligraphically gifted school friends:-)

Hopefully, in another couple of years, with speech recognition software getting better, my slow typing speed will also cease to be a handicap...

Maybe finally the thinking > typing > writing...

I wonder of what use are the hand-writing sessions that my 4 year old son Neo under-takes...He will learn wriitng only to never use it in later life...Why don't schools teach typing instead. Make it compulsory...

And why don't we teach better thinking tools in schools. We need better thinkers in larger numbers today, far more than guys with great hand-writing....

The Size of Thoughts

I had/have a book by this name. By Nicholson Baker - a contemporary American novelist, whose writings focus on minute inspection of the narrator's stream of thought.

Baker is difficult to follow. Past attempts have been bouncers. But I love this phrase - the size of thoughts...

So, I decided to compile 10 Size of Thoughts Thots:-)

1. Very often, my immediate pressing work requires very small sized thoughts. Nano thoughts. Sometimes, no thoughts at all.

2. If we are satisfied with mid-sized thoughts, that's all we will ever have!

3. The company we keep, affects the size of our thoughts. Some people, organisations just shrink the size of your thoughts! Stay away from them...

4. Children have a habit of why-chaining(aisa kyun hota hai) everything! Their constant company can increase both the size and the shape of one's thoughts!

5. One person can change the size of thoughts of a country, an industry - Gandhi, Ratan Tata!

6. The more we stay with a problem, the more the size of our thoughts increase!

7. In advertising, who has the thought/ or sometimes the department of thought determines the size of thought:-)

8. Has constant blogging increased the size of my thoughts?! Decreased the size of my thoughts?

9. Do you only wonder about the size of thoughts related to work? What about the size of thoughts outside of work? For a social cause, any cause...

10. Have you noticed how News TV is squeezing the size of our thoughts?

I don't know whether it's making much sense...But I enjoyed the shape of these thots if not their size:-)

Bono-vita

"If we ask children below the age of 10(maybe lower) to draw a spacecraft, they will design their own design.

After the age of 10, they will draw a rocket with N.A.S.A written on the side!!

We think we like children to be children but create conditions( generally speaking) where they prefer to act like adults as soon as possible:-(" - from Edward de Bono's book 'New Thinking for the New Millennium'

The Salt Curve

I want to do a Edward de Bono week...I came in contact with this father of lateral thinking at the 'dilli gate' second hand book bazaar over a decade back(maybe more...)

Since then I have been regularly snacking on his ideas and concepts. It's a bit difficult and exhausting to read a Edward Bono cover to cover, but snacking Bono regularly has been both delicious and healthy!!

In his book, New Thinking for the New Millennium, Bono has argued that our judging system is flawed as we believe that 'if something is good, then surely more of that thing is better'!

No salt in the food makes it bad/ bland. When we add a little salt,it tastes good. But if we add more of the salt, it tastes bad again!

Technology is good. So more technology is better. However, it took more than two decades for worker productivity to actually rise after computers were first introduced in offices in the US.

Communication is good. So more communication is better. But I feel there was more information, more emotion and better communication in the monthly letter I wrote to my parents during my engineering days than the daily staccato communication on the mobile phone!

Blogging is good. So twitter is better!! Highly questionable I feel...

Humour in ads is good. So more humour in all ads is better??

Information is good. So more information is better. But 100 slide power-points often have less to tell than a 20 slide presentation!! More information might actually clog human decision making ability. And intuition tells me is the number one planner malaise:-)

de Bono's Salt Curve is therefore a great concept to keep in mind when devising communication solutions!