https://ingenium.engr.tamu.edu/software-skills-are-the-key-to-success-for-an-electrical-engineer/

https://ingenium.engr.tamu.edu/need-an-adventure-try-a-hackathon/

https://ingenium.engr.tamu.edu/planning-a-research-paper/

https://ingenium.engr.tamu.edu/find-your-place-in-aggieland/ 

https://ingenium.engr.tamu.edu/cherry-picking-your-research-advisor-and-project/ 

https://ingenium.engr.tamu.edu/3-steps-to-land-an-internship/ 

https://ingenium.engr.tamu.edu/hobbies-an-outlet-for-your-busy-life-in-grad-school-and-beyond/ 

https://ingenium.engr.tamu.edu/why-you-should-consider-grad-school/ 

https://ingenium.engr.tamu.edu/3-important-tips-for-excelling-in-powerpoint-presentations/ 

Billions of people in this world start their life in a language other than English. However, the modernization of the communities is mandating a single means of communication, English. Although this necessity teaches us English, we cannot get over the sub-conscious translation process. For example, any non English speaker starts by processing the upcoming words of English in his/her native language and by the time these words come out of voice box, it is magically English. The problem lies here.

Speaking of me, I observe some words pop out in my conversations, aimlessly. For example, just, actually, so, I think, and many more. Of all these I figured “Just” is mostly unnecessary. I became conscious about this word. Now I use it rarely. But, why is this word such a danger?

The most common example is when I say, “Hey I just reached”. When I say the above sentence, it conveys my annoyance towards my friend periodically asking about my location while waiting at a movie. But if I say the same to a friend who just waits for my arrival, it is rude. What’s worse? If the friend is an English speaker, who inherently differentiates the placement of “just”. Now think about saying “Hey I reached” in both scenarios. Look how pleasant it is. I keep my cool with a pushy friend and have more fun with a non pushy friend.

Also, this word “just” belittles you. When you add just to anything you do while explaining your achievements, it removes all the hard work, dedication and pain that went into the job. For example, “That is just application of an algorithm I developed in my college.” This statement is supposed to convey how quickly I solved a given problem. Instead it says, “Well, I did nothing special. It was easy.” Now switch to, “That is application of an algorithm I developed in my college.” This describes my college work, the way I remembered my work’s scope of application, adaptation and the time I saved while solving the problem.

By removing “just”, the sentences can gain lot of power. I was practicing it for a while and will continue in 2019. Little things like this can make a lot of significant improvement in communication. Cheers to all the people who keeps themselves developing every moment.

If I go out and ask a question to a bunch of human beings about Artificial Intelligence(AI), a few of them may say that machines taking over human beings is scary and they would do whatever it takes to stop or delay the inevitable. Let’s see.

A few years ago when Facebook took off after a good start, people started seeing ads. Specifically, the ads about an item or place they just googled. There was an element of surprise. A lot of panic, blog posts, and debates happened. Now, atleast for me, when I see the ad about an item I just searched, all I do is just scroll my Facebook wall, plainly. No more panic. I guess many shifted their perspective towards the ads on any platform. Same follows with the music search and the resulting suggestions on Spotify or YouTube. (For Apple fans, Apple music)

Forget about Facebook. I cannot deny the fact that Google enables my daily work with the level of integration into different platforms and the range of ecosystem. A silly yet best example. I need to transfer an image from desktop to my phone. Let me clear that there are infinite number of ways. However, here is what I follow. I start a new mail and add the attachment. It is saved as a draft. I open Gmail on my phone, go to drafts, and download. Bingo! I have it on my phone now. So why should I worry about them allowing ads when I get lot of free and easy stuff?

Going back to AI, as soon as an awareness is raised in public about all the AI devices that are existing in their lives already, people will abruptly stop worrying. For example, adaptive cruise control in a car. You let the technology take over your car and bank your life on it. Do I need to mention that people worry more about machines killing people than machines taking jobs? Still we do it with family in the rear seat. Don’t we? I can write more examples but I will leave it as a food for thought.

100% of our fears are because we imagine. If someone asks me to give away one thing forever, I would say the power of imagination of future. A happy imagination leads to waste of time, false hope, and pseudo happiness. Ever felt the rush of harmones when you smile within yourself creating a virtual happy moment? Those harmones will definitely give false hope to the brain. On the other hand a bad imagination will lead to stress and what not. I don’t see any good from this. All it does is trick you from escaping the moment.

The proverbs about being positive is just encouraging to imagine positive. When one sits imagining a positive outcome it will never happen because all the time to finish the work is used in imagining a “positive” outcome. So whenever you feel like you need to achieve something do it instead of amplifying the feeling of “like to achieve”.

In the end, we are scared about AI because we see the Hollywood depiction of AI, humanoids to be specific, and imagine the same in real world. See how “imagine” creepily came into the sentence. So don’t imagine. Stay in the current moment. Embrace whatever is with you and enables you. Understand it, whatever it is. The same way we increased our ignore factor towards the ads, we will let the AI become part of our lives and ignore a humanoid walking beside us on a nice spring morning. Well I imagined, didn’t I? Facepalm!! I am another human being at the end of the day.

Don’t imagine. Don’t be scared. Be happy. Work hard!!

On the first sight, it is the most rudest sentence one can say. I can never force other person to accept anything. Atmost I can talk to convince but never demand.

However, I am talking about self acceptance. I found that it can do wonders. I tested on myself for a few months now.

Let’s say you face a person who does not behave according to what you think is right. In simple words, you find someone annoying. Now, the immediate reaction, at least for me, will be to think what are the ways that person is annoying. You will keep thinking about that person and how annoying that person is. You will tell your friends. You will try to think how that person could have behaved better. This thought process destroyed some of your time which can never come back. Instead, accept that you are annoyed. Close your eyes and tell to yourself, “I am annoyed and it’s okay to be.”

Any such feeling can be subsided by two simple sentences. If you are angry, accept to yourself that you are angry and it’s okay. But doing this you can reduce the right/wrong conflict between two of your organs, whatever those are.

After trying this out, I felt so refreshed. Whenever a conflict arise I take a side, immediately, and the side doesn’t matter. It does not matter because I feel 90% of my thoughts are not going to be useful in any way for my future sustainability. So I wipe out any feeling straight away by this acceptance method.

Finally, ACCEPT that you are a normal human being and all these feelings of anger, impatience, laziness, etc. are common and it’s ok to be under the influence of this feeling. By reiterating to your brain about your current state, you are not letting your current state to take over your moment. So start accepting, stay calm and productive. ☺

Free refills is the best way for any restaurant to keep customers stay longer, thereby motivating them to spend more. But I am not talking about those refills.

I know three kinds of friends. The ones with whom I cannot find the end of any topic. With second type of friends, I do see an end. Then the rest I don’t even find a start, let alone the end.

However, the trick of life is that most of the friends do not place me in the same category as I put them. This is where it gets tougher. A friend whom I can talk for hours knows how to end it. Another friend whom I wish to talk less tries to discuss more.

A rare set of people place each other in the same category. This is called anonymously swiping right in the digital world. Luckily, I have different friends whom I can talk politics, technology, useless topics (truly necessary), world affairs, movies, music and many more.

The whole struggle is to push myself up the ladder with whom I wish to talk all day. For that, I need to constantly keep up with my knowledge in any topic that I discuss with my friends. Else I slip into second or third category of friends. Definitely not an ideal situation!!

If I need to stay longer on top of the list, it is not as simple as grabbing those free refills. I need to invest time (money in the restaurant) and reap the rewards.

My point is that if you need help from someone, you must be ready to invest time and effort for them or any fellow human being. Help can be in any form. In my above example it is spending quality time. If you listen, you will be listened. Life rarely gives free refills but it makes you stay.

Be good and kind ☺

Given any situation, each of us know how to act. Be it speech, physical, mental or anything else, we do know “the right way”. But, I observed it is so difficult to apply the known theory. At least for me!

When I sit back and recollect the day’s events, a few of the moments among which I got a chance to react, I chose the path that is definitely not the right one. My reactions might have implanted one negative point in the receiver’s mind. An immediate apology can definitely show no effect. It was already late by the time I bite my tongue.

I am an engineer. Application is part of my job. While I am able to apply my technical knowledge I am failing to apply the general knowledge, aka common sense. I felt this situation needs a repair. All I needed was some “me” time and fresh air. Luckily, my twisted ankle served as an excuse to skip gym and provided me with everything I need, a peaceful evening.

I started thinking the solution for the problem.

“The easiest and effective way debug any problem is to think of at least three possible solutions,” said my professor.

Following my professor’s advice, I thought of three possible solutions.

1. Think before speaking/acting

2. Focus on the situation to be able to act sane.

3. Understand the scenario

Since my childhood, the most common advice is to think twice before acting. But do we have enough time to think and act? May be! But I feel, not always. It still is the best solution irrespective of any other factor.

However, if we are focussed on one task we can achieve success in applying the common sense. Well, this is not really practical. Multitasking is “the thing” of the century before A.I. takes over mundane tasks. Time is the most valuable asset for one to invest entirely in one task at a time.

Finally the situation. If we can sense the situation/mood life become much easier. We do not take offense for any type of racial or sexual comment at a stand up comedy show. It needs no explanation.

To conclude, I think it is important to understand the situation before taking up any task and act accordingly. After all the ground work, it is equally important to think twice before acting.

Starting now, I hope to practice to understand the situation I am in and act accordingly. In future, if we cross paths and you observe that I am not practicing properly, I am glad to take criticism. After all we are here to make ourselves and the world a better place.

Cheers!!🍻

It has been nearly three years since I entered The United States of America. Each and every moment of these three years was filled with excitement, amusement, surprise, and happiness. My experience is 99% positive. May be because I started in the most beautiful Boulder, Colorado, which I call home. I can vouch for you, Boulder will be home to everyone who spent a part of their life there. Thousands of memories filled my three years with everything positive. New relations with friends, professors, industrial experts, intellectuals, and thus the list would go on. When I look back, I see happiest moments and a few regretting incidents. But the best thing I see is the change in me. I cannot believe how strong I have become. The aggregate of multiple experiences pushed me to better myself.

The day I landed in Denver International Airport, one of the largest airports in the world, I walked out of west gate watching the Rocky mountains welcoming the sun into their arms. Wow! Can the moment be any better?. That moment I changed the description on all my social media handles to “Nature Lover”. Luckily there was no one to feel jealous for calling nature my lover. Anyways, as we were waiting the bus arrived. It was the narrowest bus body I have ever seen in my life and at the same time most efficient occupancy.

A week before the classes started, I worked in the bookstore on-campus. That one week introduced me many first hand experiences. The friendly nature of people in USA, disappointing coffee (the first and last coffee in these three years), ability to walk distances without breaking a sweat, smiling bus drivers, funny bus names (Hop, Skip, Bound, and Jump. Aren’t they funny?) and countless other things. The most important and unbelievable thing is the Salsa practice. I was a shy person, who thinks not twice but forever to talk to a new person, let alone salsa dance with a new female. I joined a Salsa practice group who were giving a demo during the fall welcome party. In no time, snow arrived and my love for Boulder grew with no leaps and bounds. The mountains were different each day. After a busy spring, I moved to California for an internship.

SAN FRANCISCO!!! Well, What can I say? The first city I fell in love with. The architecture, the planning, the people, the celebration, the weather and never ending Pacific Ocean. The variety of street performances, the food, the marine museum, Ghirardelli ice creams, Redwoods, and the mighty Golden Gate Bridge. There is history in every molecule of San Francisco air. The proximity to multiple national forests, beautiful landscapes, and never ending coast make it such a rare city. The technology and companies around my home in San Jose fascinated me to an overwhelming level. From the minute part of my electronics to the top level objects everything is found around me. There was hardly any space in technology space to take a breathe. I made wonderful friends. The San Jose/Bay area culture pushed me to socialize. I lost half of my fear. May be I might have done a real salsa dance but there was no girl, luckily?

The next year repeated my first year life at Boulder, but the mountains still looked fresh everyday. One more year passed with some more new people and entirely different academic experiences. One year at National Institute of Standards and Technology (about them in one sentence, they decide the time on your computer) in parallel with my professor Dr. Eric Bogatin’s lab. If there is anything technical knowledge in me, it is from him. My dad used to tell me “Everyone gets a turning point in their life.” I honestly feel that turning point is my association with Dr. Bogatin.

One year ago I moved to California, yet again. The places are never boring. Every holiday I visit the same places with a new set of friends. Every time I visit, I learn/see something new. I figured California has more history compared to my history textbooks through out my primary and secondary school. There are thousands of minor incidents in the past three years but those stay in my heart and may be will spill out in another article. I do not know if life is celebrated everyday in other parts of the world. But I do celebrate here and it is a beautiful place to live.

My CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, reviews a non-fiction book every quarterly meeting. One such book is “Hit Refresh” by Satya Nadella. It caught my attention because I can relate to his stories filled with cricket, parents pressure, and many “Indian” things. This is just beginning. As I went deep into the book, there is a beautiful story in every aspect of his life. He was able to look beyond the sight of a naked eye. One such story inspired me to think beyond and write this piece today. The story is how Microsoft builds partnerships with rivals and compete at the same time. I looked beyond and understood that we, human beings, should follow it.

We differ with most of the human beings. The difference is internal and external. While we reached a phase where external differences virtually doesn’t exist, we never progressed in internal differences. It means we were trying and talking about only 50% of a human being since ages.

There was a time where color defined the job. We realized it is not the way nature intend us to live. We started giving equal opportunity to everyone. Now the judgement based on external appearance is no more a proud talk. In fact it is illegal most of the times. Millions of supporters are making it possible to make the world a better place for everyone irrespective of any external classification.

However, we judge our friends and colleagues based on their internal self. On a Friday evening, in a noisy bar, a group of friends amplify their voices talking about a person who behaved odd. It is a proud talk, nobody feels bad about the talk. We talk ill about people in different time and locations. We discuss only one topic, behavior.

Behavior is the major projection of inner self. We are always ready to accept a friendly banter but not the same words from a stranger. Here, the only variable is our behavior. The friend and stranger are both same human beings. Remember? We eliminated the external differences. If we draw two different imaginary figures for two identical people in the same situation, imagine how many situations, people and judgments we make in 24 hours of a day? I am not supporting a wrong behavior. I am trying to portray how deep is the word behavior.

We are drawing these imaginary persons based on one situation with them. It is same as describing a person based on his/her color. One characteristic cannot define the human being is the thought that brought us together physically. But we move away mentally because of one mental characteristic in which we differ with other person.

If we differ with a person, technically we differ with that particular opinion. If I have different political preferences with my friend, I should not hate him. I hate my friend’s opinion on politics. It should not interfere with any of my interactions with my friend. There should be no baggage from previous interaction. Every interaction is a fresh one. If we recollect all our quarrels and hate speeches, are they fresh every time?

This is similar to Satya Nadella’s explanation in his book. In my own words, companies consists of different business units. Some of these business units compete against similar ones in a different company. But this does not make the two companies rival. They collaborate in some other business units while competing in the similar product market. If the companies start to be rivals because they compete in 20% of their product line, there will no innovation. Technology is not built in a day by a single person. It is a huge contribution from thousands of sources.

Similarly, our world is built by billions of people doing their job. We cannot hate or reject someone because of their one characteristic, external or internal. We are almost there in eliminating external classification. I hope we can practice leaving the baggage behind and start every moment afresh. If you made it till here, say to yourself, “Atleast, I will try”.

Running is the most useful workout. It improves posture, metabolism, strength, mood and most importantly rock-solid mental strength.

On day one, I started with a goal of 1 mile slow jogging. Ten minutes into the start I felt severe burn and pain in my calves. Luckily I was able to take inspiration from one of the gym instructors I met,

The moment you feel the burn, you should push yourself for at least two more minutes because that is when the effect of workout is processed inside the body.

I pushed myself for two more minutes counting numbers from 1 to 120 in sync with my heavy breathing. Surprisingly, the pain subsided. I thought, may be, I can continue. I was able to finish 1 mile according to fitness tracker.

I did not experience any of the above mentioned benefits of running on day 1 because it is just day 1. I continued jogging, although irregularly, for one month. I observed the change in confidence, thought process and as a result a positive mood.

As I understood the benefits I made my jogging a regular activity. In two months I was feeling no pain at all when I jog 1 mile. I realized it was the time to challenge myself. I decreased the time target for 1 mile. The process of pain, pushing, and the final no pain stage repeated. My calves, hamstrings and quadriceps became strong. It was one of the proud moments for a newbie to workout routines. I started to see the changes in different aspects of my life. Life is no more sluggish. My jogging became running. Every time I run, I tell myself, “Just a minute more.” This change in attitude made me highly resistant to temporary pleasures. I am able to say not this time.

Last week I went on a 11 mile hike in Redwoods along with my friends. I promised myself I should not sit for the entire hike. As we walked through a steep rising part of hike I told myself, “there is a flat surface just around the corner”. I pushed myself every time I was going upwards. I was able to keep my promise. In fact, we hardly stopped in the entire hike. It was a big accomplishment amid trembling legs, growling empty stomach and totally drained body. The happiness of keeping such promises is way higher than the suffering my physical body went through.

Running teaches us Persistence. The most important quality for any human being to keep up with various promises because the world is full of baits. The mini refrigerator with soft drinks and energy drinks at the checkout lane in stores is one such example. The people around us and their pursuance to get into whatever they do, the lazy and comfort life our brain chooses on a weekend, etc., are a few other examples. If we develop persistent attitude towards our goal we can overcome these distractions. I found by experience that running is one of the best ways to develop Persistence. Now if I skip running for a while, I can take it up immediately because I experienced the benefits. It is all about starting for the first time.

Bhagavad Gita is one of the books that describes life in a beautiful way. The most famous saying from the book, as written below, translates to

karmaṇy-evādhikāras te mā phaleṣhu kadāchana

mā karma-phala-hetur bhūr mā te saṅgo ’stvakarmaṇi

You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction..

Any kid who grows up in India, especially in a Hindu family, will be familiar with this. This is not the first and last book to describe the importance of the process over result. Most of the preaching texts present this fact in different forms to the readers. It is not over by presenting in a book. We need to understand it to adopt in our lives.

“The process” need not be explained to an artist who smiles after finishing a beautiful landscape on the canvas. It is similar to the smile on the face of a farmer after seeing a fully grown crop, a mother seeing the face of her child enjoying the food she prepared, a student sitting among its peers in the commencement ceremony, and a player who fought for the championship. Every achiever will wear the smile with content.

However, did you observe the smile by soccer players after weeping for the loss on a soccer field? Similar to the smile by the silver medal winner in the Olympics, the smile by a heart broken person seeing his/her love move away. In all these type of situations there is weeping, sadness and a heavy heart. But all those feelings turn to a small smile from the bottom of their heart. This smile is no different from the smile of winners. The people are in complete contrast, not the smile.

Because each and everyone were involved in the process. They enjoyed it and they wish to enjoy it in a better way next time. They choose to move on. They discarded the result. In the end they remembered how they fought in a soccer field, how the individual gave it all to win the gold, how hundreds of moments still look beautiful after a breakup.

People who quit on their new year resolutions are not ready to admire the process. It is not a blame but a fact. We assume to lose 10 pounds in the first week of a workout routine. This may be a good ambition but one need to understand that it leads to disastrous health issues. We place unrealistic goals and always run to reach that goal. We forget that we need to run fast, straight and zero distractions. We forget the process.

During my reading spree I came across a book review blog by Nitin Dangwal. It was a perfect post for me because of my love for physics. I bought the book with Amazon same day delivery. After seeing the number of pages, I was excited about the fact that I will be able to finish third book for the day. About 10 pages into the book I was not able to follow it. The language used is on a higher level. I closed the book.

I could have continued and finished. But I want to enjoy the process of reading. I wish to visualize everything the author sees by looking over his shoulder. When that is not happening I cannot read anymore. This is part of brutal honesty with myself. No diplomacy at all. I am more concerned about living the scenarios presented in any book. I am not worried about finishing the book, which is my goal. I want to be in the process.

Our everyday life is a process. We need to live in the process and admire it. Take moment by moment. At the end all we need is a good night sleep. A mentally tired person sleeps better than a physically tired person. When we are physically tired we lose energy. On the other hand we gain more energy when we are mentally tired. Our mood improves at the end of a fruitful day. We need to be mentally tired by keeping our brain active every moment of the day thinking about that particular moment. Living the moment and enjoying it is the reason for ultimate happiness.

Here comes another person who writes about social media. But read the title carefully. I said “why”. In this entire post I am not going to give a single negative feedback about facebook. I am going to give you a reason. A reason same as you give yourself when you hit the gym in morning. The same reason you eat pizza with friends on a game night. The exact same reason why after a hectic day you let everything be and fall asleep. The reason is “Happiness and relief”.

I had 1500+ friends on facebook. After I was fed with multiple meaningless memes on my wall, I re-sorted my friends list. The count came down to 500. Guess what?My wall rarely updated with a new post. It was boring. I scrolled aimlessly to refresh and found the same post on top of my wall everytime. I took a look at my messenger. There was hardly a conversation with a friend. I came to a conclusion.

I am not utilizing facebook for what it is designed for.

For me facebook exists because,

1. You make friends with people whom you met in real world.

2. Follow updates about a good product/celebrity/intellectual/politician etc… by liking their respective page or joining a group.

3. Voice/video calling from messenger

As I grew up to understand the importance of time, I felt there is no need to make friends in facebook when you know them in real world. I can request the other person’s phone number and call or text. I realized I should look into my life and my photos for happiness rather than other’s life updates.

Next, following updates about a product, celebrity or an intellectual.

I am not sure if we need to worry about products because it stimulates our impulse to purchase all the unnecessary products.

After watching multiple interviews of celebrities, I found one common point. In hindsight, they request people to understand that celebrities are human beings in first place. They love to be treated as a normal human being and receive appreciation for their success. There is no need to glorify anyone too much.

Coming to a few intellectuals facebook pages, I observed they do not write anything specific on facebook. They share their blog from their own website/quora/medium. After all facebook is a platform to reach more audience. It is useful for that person but not me.

Should I really say something about the use of messenger for voice/video calling? There are multiple applications with a better quality for voice/video calling.

The day I started to look at my life as a clean and well organized room, I became a better person. If there is something that I do not use, I discard it. Facebook and Instagram just joined the list. It is same as moving away from company of friends with different goal. Life is much better when we remove clutter.

As promised I did not say one negative word about Facebook. I respect what people at Facebook do. Their employees invest their time and effort on building a wonderful product. But it is not for me.

As soon as I give break to my brain it delves into past. Not everything in past is a sweet memory. Past can be interesting, surprising, shocking, sad, and very rarely happy. For me it was shocking. The way I slid down the bell curve is shocking to me in many ways. I found the root cause and started to climb up the successive bell curve. But what is with all this bell curve and climbing? Here you go.

Before I was 18…

I used to read a lot. I was one of those studious kids who stood first in education and last in sports. My reading was not limited to the heavy books that I used to carry to school. I read a lot of personal development books. Those books were not forced onto me. I genuinely bought them out of my own interest from the yearly book exhibition that takes place in my hometown. I did not buy comics or novels. The books I bought include biographies (Abdul Kalam, Rafael Nadal, Yuvraj Singh, Dhirubhai Ambani), Stephen Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people, a couple of philosophical books authored by Jiddu Krishnamurthy.

These books are pretty heavy in content for my age. I am honestly thankful to my parents for purchasing those books inspite of a kid (me) asking them. I am thankful because if it was my kid who requested i would brush it off saying those books are not for his/her age. It was an age where I knew no social engagement. I never cared how the world looked at me. At that point things changed because I became aware of my surroundings and fell prey to “social acceptance”.

During 18–22…

As I fell prey for social acceptance I felt it was necessary to do certain things for my friends to accept me. A few things such as binge watch latest/famous tv series, gossip, read fiction, watch every new movie, get a girlfriend, and that list doesn’t end. As I was away from home during this time, I had to take decisions myself. It is quite evident now that most of my decisions taken were to make others happy. I can barely remember the number of nights I went to bed with a sense of accomplishment. It took me nearly three years to finish entire episodes of “Friends” tv series. Nothing can portray my interests better than this.

All my undergraduate was a confusion between what am I? and what am I doing? Once I stepped out of that stage, I introspected. I realized I reached the bottom most point of the bell curve. I told myself that I will start climbing immediately.

The moment I started to climb…

I started with Quora. The almost dead curiosity in me woke up at once. It pushed me to read more and more. After a certain period of time, I started to write. My google search changed from “ latest movies/songs” to “list of informative websities”. I read through numerous websites. Finally I got back to the reading habit.

Surprisingly, the world reflected back my thoughts as it is explained in “The Secret”. I bumped into people who read non fiction. My current CEO Lip-Bu Tan ends every quarterly meeting with a non-fiction book suggestion. Speakers in the my Toastmasters Club are giving book reviews as their speeches.

The beauty about non-fiction is that I just need one good book. Each book quotes many books as part of the narration. One book leads to another and the chain will never end. It does not happen in fiction.

I was able to read 150 pages of “Presence” by Amy Cuddy in one sitting. I finished (almost) “Hit Refresh” by Satya Nadella on another day. But “The Davinci Code” was in my book shelf for one year now bookmarked half way through.

Now I sleep almost everyday with most pleasant and calm mind. Medium is my new medium to gain and share knowledge.

If you made it till here, I would like to tell about a strange but good practice that I am trying myself. Talk to three new people every week. No need to remember names. Take initiative for a small talk. It helps a lot in improving self confidence in public.

On a highly motivating summer morning, I hit the gym. As I was running on a treadmill I closed my eyes, briefly, before realizing my inability to keep up with pace of the treadmill belt. I opened my eyes to a practical experience of functioning of brain. Our brain picks objects, people, and numerous other living and non-living things to navigate our locomotion organs. The moment we deny this reference, brain panics. It may not be true in every situation. For example, I can walk with closed eyes from my living room to kitchen. Well, I touch objects on my way assuring my brain of my path. Oops! looks like I have to take my words back. We do need reference in every situation in one form or the other. However, why did my brain panic while running on a treadmill? Because it needs to do keep up with multiple activities which are running and finding a reference with hand. Stopping either of the tasks will result in a disaster. In case of walking with closed eyes, you will not walk while finding an object for reference. Confused? Read this.

Moving on, why do we feel sad? In most scenarios we feel sad because we do not get something. What is the meaning of “we do not get something”? It means someone already has it. We need it too. Isn’t it? Same explanation goes for our happiness, anger, or any other feeling. It is all about a reference.

What happens if we change our perception and see the world with a new reference plane? For instance, you can see the first two paragraphs as either preaching or experience. If seen as preaching, your eyes would have searched for my qualification to write all these. If taken as experience your eyes will keep going to next word irrespective of who the author is. I wish to see the world in the experiences point of view. It helps me to listen and judge rather than judge and ignore. In the latter scenario there is no listening at all. This results in wastage of my energy and time rather than the speaker time. It was an enlightening moment when I realized what is “actually” going waste in a judge and ignore scenario.

Similarly, if you are put in a most difficult scenario, you can hate it and rant or you can embrace it and overcome. But no one is a saint to embrace difficult times. How do we do it?

We can embrace our difficult times by learning experiences from our past as well as others. We can live the past of others from books. I feel 99% of the situations we think are difficult were experienced by someone in past. There you go, we have at least one way to get out of the situation. All we need to do is apply. If you are in 1% of most difficult situation it means you are doing something ground breaking and you are capable of reducing the 1% by adding your experience to the past for future.

A recent experience inspired me towards writing this. The Indian version of Big Brother show is called Bigg Boss. In one sentence, a few participants with no mutual relations live together in a custom house, completely cut-off from external world, trying to impress audience thereby escaping weekly elimination and win the final prize. In the first episode of the most recent season, two contestants were put in a prison set up within the house. One lady and a man. The lady was eliminated after first week. She ranted about injustice she faced when all the participants targeted her and put her in prison. The other man was eliminated second week. When asked about his experience, he told that Lord Krishna was also born in a prison. Krishna turned out to be the protector of people and he is worshiped. This man took Krishna as an inspiration when he was put in the spot. His wiki speaks why he read the situation in a drastically different perspective.

He embraced the situation which resulted in a peaceful mind to recollect his knowledge where people were in similar situations. His solution was to follow the footsteps of Krishna. He applied it.

Leaning about such people enhanced my journey to better myself. While it is important to improve myself I feel it is also important to share experiences to tell someone out there, “Yes you are doing it right, keep working!”.

I read a lot of small articles. There was little patience inside me to read a book that consists of a number of pages. Something changed recently and I started to read books, physical books. One such book is “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman.

This book intrigued me and evoked a strange thought. Before describing that let me put forward a couple of sentences about the book (or at least what I understood).

We (humans, I hope no bots are reading this) have two systems in our brain. First system performs obvious tasks. Remember the phrase “silly mistakes”? Yes the culprit is this system. Second system gives everything a thought. The book is all about how do these systems work in different situations. It is a wonderful book.

Coming back to my thought, we have many theories for human evolution. One such theory, most popular, is our evolution from apes. The striking difference between a human and an ape is the tail. This difference is the root cause for my strange thought.

As you see from my bio, I am a nature admirer. I believe nature is the real God. It can create and destroy. Apes might have evolved form something else and most probably another animal family. However they grew up on trees and hardly ran around. Their lifestyle reduced the use of tail in their body. By the time apes evolved into humans, the use of tail completely vanished and nature suppressed the part responsible for tail growth. Today, after millions of years we do not have tail anymore as part of human anatomy.

Now, day by day as we are making ourselves comfortable with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning we are using less and less our second system of our brain. Which means are we ignoring that part of brain as apes ignored their tail? May be a million years down the line the next generation of species do not have second system of brain at all. What will they be called? Robots?

I think there will no war between human and machines. I feel they will just evolve from us. We will be the apes for robots. If my thoughts make sense, there will be no debate about man vs machine. We shall increase our comfort levels by the help of small devices (Hey Google, play rock songs) and gradually evolve into robots.

P.S. None of the above is a research finding. It is solely my thought that popped up when I was lying down on my bed on a lazy Sunday in sunny California.