Category: october

I got an opportunity to interact with Sandeep Kumar this week, and to hear profound ideas and stories from all genres of life. Be it language learning, traveling, painting, or writing, he is truly felt like a polymath to me. He has served over 36 years as a Diplomat at the Government of India in various Indian Embassies around the globe. Specifically Dublin, Zagreb, Kabul, Cape Town, Hong Kong,Paris, and Hanoi.

I developed a narrative while he shared ideas about his experiences in different nations about how diplomacy works, and also how to enjoy the other spectrum of life. He truly was a testament to a book I have recently started reading, Slow Productivity by Carl Newport. One of the key insight that I have truly started to believe is that we don’t have to abandon the fulfilling nature of life in order to achieve excellence in a particular domain; he made it clear that there is no doubt in putting in deep work for things that matter to you and developing a level of excellence, but at the same time he shared with us that the key here is “Balance”.

Today I came across an idea on the internet about stereotypes, and I would love to share it with you in a brief.

It is a very common phenomenon for an individual to believe that they cannot do a certain activity because their “identity” doesn’t match. For example, someone might think that they are really good at bodybuilding, and start to believe that they cannot study math because their “personality” doesn’t match it. Another example could be somewhat opposite: a person might believe that he is a nerd, or he thinks that way because the society has made him to think that way, and because of that very reason he starts to think that he cannot dance or sing, for example.

The important thing to learn from this phenomenon is that you can be whatever you want to be. You can be mathematician who loves to cook. You can be a guitarist who goes to gym. You can be a physicist who loves barbie movies.

Hence, do not restrict yourself just because you want to be confined to a particular community. The idea agrees on the fact that stereotypes exists for a reason, but there are always exceptions.

I often find myself rescheduling things on my calendar just because I missed them on my calendar at the first place. There was math review that I had to make this evening which would take about 2 hours of work and kept doing non-deepwork, which made me complete only 25% of the desired task in 2 hours. Therefore I had to reschedule everything that followed just to accommodate this. I don’t how to fight this problem(if you do, email me right away), but i believe that a *consolidation* block in your calendar each day of about 30-60 min can really help you achieve your calendar goals

It feels really different to not do the daily habits that you formed over weeks and months for a week because of some personal cause or festival.

There is a friction after you come out of that break, and it feels to let go all the friction. But from what I experienced today(the same feeling), I think it is really hard. But there is a work around. Try to bare minimum to keep up with your calendar and commitments (don’t push them). I think just keeping some what of a streak for the initial few days after the break helps us to gain momentum to go full fledged in next few days or a week.

I haven’t posted since last 2 days, because life happens.

Some things to implement.(and i recommend others to consider)

• No processed sugar
• Use a dumb phone
• Minimize quick text communication
• Prioritize deepwork
• No social media
• quality>quantity
• slow productivity>hustle
• exercise

I like festivals because these are the times when I can voluntarily skip on my calendars.

I thing that I realized this diwali was to not schedule anything on your calendar on festivals or you will end up rescheduling and pushing deadlines anyways.

take care.

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Understanding sequences and series. I haven’t proved Limit Theorems yet. As a consequence, currently my proofs are restricted to back thinking. We find the required n_0(e) for which n> n_0 proofs our initial limit by intuition . I will probably start with these theorems tomorrow.

Take care.

I read the 10,000 hour part of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and learnt few things that I would love to share.

• Once you are above the threshold of talent as a parameter, the only thing that matters is how hard effective work you put in,i.e. the number of hours you practice your art. For example; if you reach the best film school of the world, the only thing that separates you from the person next to you is how how many hours have you trained.
• 10,000 hours is golden number in the scientific community to measure expertise. He mentions that people only start performing at expert level once they have crossed the 10,000 hour mark. Malcolm gives an example of Mozart. He mentions that studies have shown that Mozart wasn’t a child prodigy, in fact until the age of 21 he didn’t create any original piece of work and instead used previous work modified to some extent. Studies call mozart as a late expert turner. He started showing expert level performance only later in life, specifically once he crossed his 10,000 hours threshold.
• Lastly, he gives examples of chess prodigies. He mentions that historically all the grand masters title holder in chess have become grandmasters only after 10 years of playing chess, roughly the time it requires for 10,000 hours of training. The only exception being Bobby, who got his title only after 9 years.

• Some math
  I solved a problem today based on set theory. One thing that I loved about solving the problem set that I am currently working on is that I am on the edge of knowing everything that is a pre-requisite and also confronting such a set of problem for the first time in my life. What is good about this position is that if I just keep spending time solving the problem, even if I am completely lost or have no idea where to go next, I eventually reach a breakthrough. It has now become a habit of mine to just keep waiting and not give up because that breakthrough moment will arrive sooner or later. The key thing that I learned while solving these problems, apart from math itself, is that if you just keep parallel with a problem and just stick around it for long enough, the breakthrough usually comes.
• P.S.: And if the breakthrough doesn’t come then get some help or tutor.

I was part of the International Press at the SLMUN (Sunbeam Lahartara MUN). The event was a success and I was able to practice skills to their best. The following is one of the press release I documented.