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Cumulative and compounding effects are poorly perceived by us, so is our understanding of micro behaviours (not to be confused with micro-optmisation) that have impact on large outcomes. I read the following story in the book ‘You can win’ by Shiv Khera which had many short stories that stay in mind for a long time.

“A baker who is illiterate, operates a very profitable business. His hearing loss also meant that he was not aware of current affairs happening at large. The only thing he did was, bake very good different kinds of breads which was so famous in the town that a lot of people stop by to keep trying his exotic varieties; as he did good business he sent his son for higher studies. When the son joined the business he was shocked to see his father making very expensive breads and experimenting with many more types; he was shocked because he knew the economy took a downturn recently and a lot of people are going to struggle keep themselves fed. He convinced his father to bake only plain bread so that people could afford. Slowly the customers ended being disappointed that their favourite varieties are no longer available and stopped coming. The business had to shutdown as no longer customers turned up, the father tells his son you are right the economic depression is here glad that I listened to you.”

The above story is profound, how a simple technique of listening to customers and keeping them happy kept a business blooming even in tough times. Rolling up information is only possible when people acknowledge that I don’t understand everything going on but let me learn from each step or be unaware of lots of things.

This is why some of the best developers I meet always have an element of doubt when they take a new step and make sure there are many safety nets. I have seen know it all attitudes that have brought down multi million dollars programs to stand still.

This is not new so called ‘Agile’ methodology wisdom. This thought has been there for millennia as told in the Tamil proverb – அடி மேல் அடி வைத்தால் அம்மியும் நகரும் (Adi mel adi vaithal ammiyum nagarum) which means “even seemingly large & heavy stones can be moved step by step”. This was told very often by my grandparents whenever I picked up tough new lessons in school.

If you are a software engineer and want to be very productive, ditch the attitude of “know it all” or “get every thing right always”. Instead of it, approach step by step and reap the benefits that accumulate over time that are easy to roll back when things go wrong.

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You must eat to live, not live to eat – A famous line attributed to socrates

If you want to make a big impact during a talk at a conference and you want that to be remembered by people, then choose to have a chiasmus. It is said that every presidential candidate of USA goes through the rigour of choosing the right chiasmus that will help them win.

I went through this talk from Mark Forsyth who researches words, it is a nice watch and shows speeches still matters in a lot of things.

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20 years ago I walked into my college with the arrogance of a teenager who knows a lot of things, with the thinking that know-how of knowledge and intelligence is enough to win anything thrown at me. Looking back I realise that I had barely memories of about 10-12 years but had the attitude of know it all.

College life is called head fake, it is not much about the course you have taken to learn, instead it prepares you for the unstructured life ahead. Randy Pausch talks about this in his last lecture which I realised that my entire college life was a head fake preparing me to be ready for the world with collaboration and social skills. Life as an individual is not enough, you have to learn to live together. Here are somethings that I learnt during college and later years which helped in the longer run.

Friendships – I thought friendships last a lifetime, but it is very situational. Barring a handful, most of them will not care to keep in touch. It is fruitless going out of the way to help people, the bad memories for people often carry a huge weightage compared to the good things that happened. We just should not be a jerk, good friendships will just happen over time.

Politics – Not taking sides is a best way to stay neutral and not get involved in politics; but the moment you take a stand on what is right, you are already neck deep into politics. Politics is every where as long as humans are involved, just pick your battles wisely else everyday goes into fighting pointless things.

Learning never stops – There is so much to learn, the more you learn the more you become aware that you have learnt less than what is out there. My magnitude of learning increased multifold only after I started doing internships, knowing how to write calculator program was just enough to give you that 80% in classroom. Solving real world problems involved intensive learning and unlearning, often there was only one shot at solving the problems thrown at you so you have to be ready to face new problems not structured predictable textbook problems.

Managing money – Managing small sums of money that comes as pocket money prepares you well ahead for the monthly salaried life. Planning for a month seems to be hard at first, you start learning only after you spend the entire pocket money within 10 days and then have to borrow from friends, lose some friendships over money before learning to save and spread spending over time.

College is the last stage of a structured life for most of us, the unstructured life just flies by and we will be sitting on a couch on a holiday and wonder how the last 20 years flew by.