Hacking the Game
Thoughts on navigating Information and staying sane in the process
At the beginning of my career, I always pondered upon the following question:
“What are the skills in the industry that will help me stay relevant?”
also,
(and this came after a couple of people I knew had breakdowns due to a disruption in work — life balance, with the weights tipping heavily towards work)
“how do I stop myself from going crazy!”
Since I had zilch experience to think about it in an objective manner, frantically, I would seek out “experts” who I thought could answer this for me, or at least direct me towards the “right” path. Turns out, they couldn’t be more wrong, and in asking them that question I couldn’t be so.
I gave up on it.
There was always a list of <so and so> technologies to master in <so and so> year to stay relevant in <so and so> industry.
The point is, we are all looking for one size fits all answer, which is quite understandable in our situation but we are being given the less relevant answers because we are seeking the wrong ones.
Let me elaborate that..
One thing that is obvious by now is that information is exponentially abundant. Not to say that it wasn’t there before, but now ‘information’ has found a stage called the World Wide Web and we the humans are playing the role of the ventriloquist and audience simultaneously.
There is a plethora of technological and economic factors that has contributed to getting information to the main stage. Broadly:
- Ever increasing capacity of and innovation in the infrastructure that manages flow of information
- Cost optimization- which in layman terms translates to companies being able to achieve cost reduction through XYZ. So, people now pay less while availing more benefits — a mutually beneficial transaction
I believe, these two points have broadly helped us, but in a hyperspace you might find a complex imagery of factors forming a convoluted network, working as backstage crew to get ‘Informita’ (stage name for our darling) to the main stage.
So, as you can probably guess, there is no limit to what can be done with information and to what is being done with it. This makes it quite natural for something new popping up all the time.
*New technology solves the existing problems. A New fresh batch of problems pops up*
and the loop continues
This is also the plot of this entire act with Informita and the ventriloquists, plus we have a pretty demanding audience.
This brings me back to the preamble of my article:
How do I stay relevant and sane?
I will attempt an answer to this, which might be complete or incomplete (factoring in psychological biases and fuzzy memory). Also, my experience might paint a different picture, most of you wouldn’t agree with. Hence, I’m setting, ‘in my experience’ as a constant, because this would cover all that I have observed and experienced.
Career
During the days when I had just joined my current company, we were given a lot of time to learn the required tools & technologies, and engage with experienced folks to understand what the requirement in the industry was. This was because as freshers we wouldn't be put on projects right away. Rather, we were given time to interact, observe, apply and improvise.
One thing that I noticed in my peers and I, was this constant anxiety to learn as many things as possible through online courses. Initially, there would always be this tension in the air of under-performing or not being able to live up to the “expectations”. To be honest, there weren’t many expectations. We would even feel guilty of playing TT in the cafeteria because that time could be spent on learning something new.
and that is exactly the entire problem.
I have through observation and coming across a lot of articles, sensed an uncomfortable air around productivity and “appearing” busy, so much so that people feel useless if they don’t do something or even when they steel a longer than usual break from work. Sure, we are a small part of a very large network of people who are inter-dependent to get stuff done, so you should be respectful of people’s time as well. But beating yourself for not being able to live up to the “standards” is utterly naive. There’s always room for flexibility and optimally doing things that pans out well in everyone’s favor.
I, being overcome with guilt, started making “use” of my time by enrolling in 10 different courses, and hurriedly completing them so that I could just get a sense of doing something. Although, I got a sense of understanding what I was learning at the time, if you ask me any of it today, its like it never entered my brain. Not only I, it was also true for some other friends I discussed this with.
This, I believe happened because of the following reasons:
- I didn’t spend enough time practicing what I learnt
- There was no available avenue for practical application
- We have become increasingly reliant on technology to store information for us, that by default we don’t make an active effort to efficiently store it in our biological memory. So, what ends up happening is that we don’t remember what we acquired but we know where it is stored just enough to access it when we need it.
The information out there is so much that our biological hardware isn’t enough to store everything possible, for which we have to rely on external tech hardware.
Takeaway?
- It is no longer necessary to know everything beforehand
- Problem solving skills and the ability to learn things quickly are extremely crucial weapons in your arsenal
- The ability to navigate through constraints is crucial
- Improv is the ultimate game you’re playing
For me, these elements composed a strong structure using which I would approach problems as they come. On a side note, I learnt this only when I started getting involved with client engagements.
Problems vary across domains, but one thing that remains constant is how you solve those and if you don’t know something (because there is a gigantic list of things you can learn), how quickly you acquire it for practical application as and when needed.
I later found out that the same structure was working for my peers as well. We all were too inundated with things we could learn, that almost as a coping mechanism we started focusing on things we NEEDED to learn in real time, diversifying our portfolio in a simplified manner.
Occam’s razor, moi amie.
The point that I’ve been trying to put across is that, don’t beat yourself for not knowing enough, there’s always something you will not. Work on a strong structure that will help you solve problems across disciplines and as you go, keep improving this structure.
Life
Being able to manage information isn’t just part of your work life. There is so much that comes our way:
1. You want to keep yourself fit — naturally you’d be experimenting with a lot of things. Home workout or gym? Supplements or natural food? weights or no weights? Likewise, what kind of diet you should be going for? yada yada. Depending on all of this you might wander, do I have time to research all this, or should I simply seek expert advice
2. You have a social life — your attention is divided among different groups of friends, and family. I wouldn’t tell you which one of these is ultimately important, since each of these has a role to play. You need to prioritize according to the demands of the situation.
3. You’ve got some time — should I learn a new instrument or a new sport? Should I be devoting time to reading books? or should I browse through articles? Should I watch TED talks or should I binge on another episode of Modern family.
OR should I just do nothing at all
Likewise, umpteen other choices stand in front of us daily. It’s easy to see how they can lead us to decision paralysis.
Besides, you need, not only to manage you work life but other parts of your life with it, as well.
Let me simplify:
- Attention is a limited resource
- There’s so much that demands our attention
- There’s so much that we need to allocate it too
- How do we wade through the fluff and focus on the core?
One thing that worked for me was:
To have more disposable time — Disposable time, would mean the time that is left after doing things that are necessary, which could be your work, studies or sports training. Essentially, the ones that feed or could feed your stomach.
The way I am able gain more disposable time is by limiting the sources of choices that present themselves in front of me. In this process, I ended up curtailing the distractions, because of which I could spend my time in figuring out what my work required.
For someone new to the industry, work inevitably requires more time initially, since you’re in the process of figuring it out and applying it at the same time. If you are able to do with lesser distractions or none at all, you’ll be able to achieve efficiency in a lesser time. Being able to achieve efficiency will lead you to have more disposable time.
Prioritization depends a lot on how you evaluate various choices and score them discreetly into Nay and Yay:
- One thing that has helped for sure is to consciously spend my time bucketing things into nay and yay.
- Now that you have more disposable time, depending on what your inclination is you can take up various activities, be it in the domain of fitness, social circle or personal growth. The same principles apply to making choice in these.
- Do I feel like reading, or do I feel like breathing? Often being able to assess what you feel, leads you to finding what you really NEED in the current situation. Making choices for your self will only happen, when you’re not consumed by one thing COMPLETELY, in a way that wears you off.
- I found out when I have more time, I can consciously put a thought into allocation of time to all the activities.
- One particular activity isn’t consuming ALL my time, except for some anomalies some times (that’s inevitable), but most of the days this structure works well for me.
So, if someone were to ask me what’s the one skill we all need in the current times, I’d say we need to learn how to successfully manage information, amidst the abundance of it. As a first step we all NEED to be conscious of what we’re entertaining, because so much is competing for our attention these days. We need to be really good at plucking out the noise and taking the signal. The hows of figuring this out have a lot to do with the personal circumstances/constraints
P.s this is all based on my experience and a lot of it could be subjective. Although true objectivity is hard to reach, I’ve tried to touch that base. This is also dependent on the current scope of problems I’m dealing with. The structure would evolve with the scope of problems.
Additionally, There might be flaws in the article, for which I’m more than willing to accept criticism. So please feel free to reach out and discuss.
Thank you :)
