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Greetings,
Happy New Year!!! 2021 is here. Finally.....! But in all honesty, what has changed?
Can we just discard the old game and reset to a new one? If we didn't have the burden of the previous year to carry, am sure we will do much better. How I wish that was possible and we can have a normal year ahead.
Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. It is one continuous activity. As long as we recognize the fact that each year is not really a discrete event, we will do much better.
There is no doubt, billions of resolutions have been made across the world. Many will get trashed pretty quick. But as long as we have certain good automatic behaviours built in, we wouldn't need New Year fireworks to trigger any change.
One such behaviour is to look out for those who may be in the need for help. Extend a helping hand in whichever way you can. Be a motivating force within the community.
If someone forwarded you this newsletter, please thank them on my behalf! Welcome to Newsletter # 26.
Thoughts that crossed my mind, while I was reading…
Ideas That Changed My Life by Morgan Housel.
Birds of a feather flock together. That is because they have similar abilities and goals. They are all on identical paths and support each other through that journey.
However, sticking to the same flock ensures that neither will we hear a dissenting voice, nor will we ever dissent against any view. The comforting consensus view gives a warm fuzzy feeling within the cohort.
When a group creates an opinion, the hard core loyalists ensure they find ways to strengthen the belief. Each voice reinforces the other. They choose the stories to be narrated and re-narrated.
Any opposition to established ideas could mean at best, not being invited again or at worst, being asked to leave the group.
Even the slightest amount of doubt is drowned in the cacophony of supporting theories causing groupthink to feel the safest way forward.
It is easier to handle failure as a group than as an individual. It is easy to hide behind the pretext, 'despite collective wisdom we did not succeed'.
Credit is taken for the right decisions and not much guilt is felt for the wrong ones.
Groupthink is not collective wisdom. There is a big difference.
The Lesson to Unlearn by Paul Graham
The biggest drawback with schools is they teach us how to get good grades. Students want good grades because everyone judges them that way. No one goes to a fancy college to get poor grades. This makes us care about what is measured much more than about what we learned. Learning and Grades gets conflated, and that sends us down a slippery slope.
Tests are failing to measure what they are meant to measure - Learning. You can game a test imposed by an authority but it won't get you far in life. Students tend to focus on well defined content that could appear on the test. The rest is totally ignored. At best, they selectively study. At worse, they selectively cram.
When putting in work, always work hard. But don't just work towards a test. Tests should not need extra preparation if the appropriate work has been put in regularly. Studying hard makes for a diligent student. But studying hard for a test does not.
Tests which are not imposed by an authority are tests which truly measure learning. To unleash our potential, we have got to focus more on learning and not on the test.
Dubai will host the Expo 2020 towards the later half of this year. There is an expo held every 5 years in different cities across the world. It is an event held over six months and showcases futuristic technology.
At the 2010 Shanghai Expo, I personally witnessed autonomous vehicles moving around. Foolishly, I dismissed it. A decade on, the technology is here. Oh well!
The 1970 Osaka Expo had showcased early mobile phones! Hiroyuki had seen and ignored it! Two decades after that, mobile phones hit the market.
This just goes to show how long it takes for things to mature. Nothing happens overnight. The initial hype is followed by years of work, during which most forget and others lose hope. But eventually the people who are passionately working on advancements can never be written off.
The Dubai Expo was meant to be held at the end of 2020 but was postponed due to the pandemic.
I wonder what futuristic technology will we get to see this time?
How long will it take for that technology to become mainstream?
Are the concept to product cycles now compressed?
The picture is of the Tower of the Sun at the Osaka Expo park which is not far from where Hiroyuki lives.
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Stay well and see you next week.
Evian
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