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While playing cricket, it takes some time to get settled into the rhythm of the game and play well as a batsman. One thing I noticed while playing  is, as long as I concentrate on my game I continue playing well. The moment I admire my own shot or think that I did better than what I expected, I lose concentration and the performance dips. This was not only evident in cricket, it was more pronounced when I showed up on stage plays at school, it is imperative that I remain focussed till the end of the event.

This began to worry me when presenting to a large audience because I used to feel good that if first part of my presentation went on fine and I would lose focus for few moments before I regain it. Presentations unlike writing takes a lot of preparation and it is one time write only style of delivery. The focus for a presentation should be being present for the entire duration however the presentation turns out to be.

Q. How to stay away from analysis, course correction or recovery thoughts while presenting?

A. Think of worst case scenario – the worst possible thing that can happen is that the presentation can go bad. This will bring focus onto delivering the presentation than analyzing it midway.

Q. What about recoveries from failure? Should not I be prepared for it?

A. Garr Reynolds in his book Presentation Zen talks about how connected we should be with the subject we are talking about, such that we can weave a story around the topic we want to deliver and be able to deliver the talk even without the slides.

Q. How do I know the pulse of the audience?

A. It is better to do some homework about the audience we are delivering the talk to if we are new to presenting than to try to get the pulse of audience during the talk.

Q. How do I get to think about my talk or admire it?

A. Someone in the audience should record it for us to help us retrospect our talk.

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Ever wondered that some of the live wires at the office or school were not those kind when they just joined the place. It was something like they were waiting for a tipping point and their activities became live. I randomly selected a ted talk, How bacteria talk. Bonnie Bassler a biochemist, has observed that bacteria cannot turn on their behaviour until there is enough of them. But how does all the single cell animals know how many of them are around? The answer was that each type of bacteria releases a certain signature chemical molecule into their environment, based on the amount of that specific molecule a bacterium receives, they can determine the population density. This is called Quorum sensing which is also evident for insects where we think they could be intelligent but may be that they just rely on the density of their peers around to do certain tasks.

How can this apply to human behaviour? I have been lucky to move to different places and teams almost every year, which has made me observe teams get started and get going. In one of the teams I have been, we did not know that we had good number of musicians to form a band until we had some event coming in the office. The event allowed the release of signaling molecules from individuals searching for people with similar interests.

This is also true to interests in technologies and pursuing hobbies. As the workplace gets bigger it is more difficult to network and find the right group to be in unless there is enough quorum sensing. Just by someone in the team holding a regular weekly get together for a random topic can spark interests and get people to come together and switch to top gear. I observed that a group’s knowledge and skill level gets amplified if there is effective sharing, effective sharing happens only when people come together, people come together only if something is happening and something happens only if someone takes an initiative. We must make sure our workplace is conducive for quorum sensing to make the best use of everyone’s strengths and skills.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea

Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Einstein explained special relativity to the masses using thought experiments called Gedankenexperiment in German, few examples are here. The kind of explanations given through that experiment was quite easy to understand and relate to. The key point in the experiment was the absurd and almost impossible situations imagined. He revealed that time is just a difference between observed sequence of events and space is the distance between two events that are observed to occur at the same time. Nothing is uniform or static, everything is relative to something.

The reason I brought up Gedankenexperiment is that it should be a key skill developed in every individual right from the childhood. The laboratory experiments are too expensive, needs caution and sometimes impossible to perform. This applies to every field of learning, that is the reason people teach object oriented programming with inanimate objects but give a behavior to it as if it was a living thing. These experiments help grasp the theory much faster and explore the entire lengths of possibilities which in turn helps to apply well when it comes to implementation.

I have observed that many of my trainers were content centric and relied on effective brain dumps. Few of the exceptional trainers really kindled the curiosity and made me explore the roots of a topic and then the thought experiments on the way to the college did the rest. Some of my key learnings were strongly supported by the thought experiments.

Below are some of the points I found useful while learning and teaching

  • Create a picture in the listener’s mind. Visualizations are key to imagination, have a look at a very simple animation done by ‘The Inconvenient truth’ team. A kid can so easily get the idea about greenhouse gases.
  • Kindle the curiosity by planting an unfinished thought experiment in the learner’s mind. I received a lesson in chemistry where there was clear depiction of  how covalent bonds occur between atoms (after explaining the shells and inert gases) such that they enter a steadier state and then the teacher pressed the class to find out another way for atoms to steadier state. We found it and all the teacher had to do was to mention what that kind of bond is called.
  • Encourage silly questions, they trigger the best imaginations.
  • Times change, visualization tools change, keep adapting. Prezi, GoAnimate, Visual Thesaurus  are some of the few which can help in the modern classroom.
  • Time to think, this is as important as the time to teach. Crunching in more sessions and home work can eat away the time without providing enough value.
If you get a chance to teach, try it more visually such a way that it promotes Gedankenexperiment and check the results it brings.

Image: Worakit Sirijinda / FreeDigitalPhotos.net