Ashutosh Nilkanth's Blog

We have so many choices these days, and so little time to make a choice. From the choice of the right breakfast cereal to the choice of the right health insurance, we are trapped in an endless spiral of everyday choices.

Last night, I watched a TEDGlobal talk by Sheena Iyengar, a Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, about her research on “choice”. Yes, choice, or choices – depending on how you interpret modern dilemmas. It’s a really insightful talk about the gullible nature of choices:

The [second] assumption which informs the American view of choice goes something like this. The more choices you have, the more likely you are to make the best choice. So bring it on Walmart with 100,000 different products, Amazon with 27 million books and Match.com with — what is it? — 15 million date possibilities now. You will surely find the perfect match. Let’s test this assumption by heading over to Eastern Europe. Here, I interviewed people who were residents of formerly communist countries, who had all faced the challenge of transitioning to a more democratic and capitalistic society. One of the most interesting revelations came not from an answer to a question, but from a simple gesture of hospitality. When the participants arrived for their interview I offered them a set of drinks, Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite — seven, to be exact.

During the very first session, which was run in Russia, one of the participants made a comment that really caught me off guard. “Oh, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all just soda. That’s just one choice.” (Murmuring) I was so struck by this comment that from then on I started to offer all the participants those seven sodas. And I asked them, “How many choices are these?” Again and again, they perceived these seven different sodas, not as seven choices, but as one choice: soda or no soda. When I put out juice and water in addition to these seven sodas, now they perceived it as only three choices — juice, water and soda. Compare this to the die-hard devotion of many Americans, not just to a particular flavor of soda, but to a particular brand. You know, research shows repeatedly that we can’t actually tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi.

…In reality, many choices are between things that are not that much different.

While this phenomenon may be cultural, some of it also has to do with the notion of individualism in many societies. “We are what we choose”, remarked Jeff Bezos in his speech to the Class of 2010 at Princeton University. But thinking too hard can often lead to poor choices.

What if most, if not all, of the choices could be simplified with something simple — a default option.

A default option, provisioned through careful analysis, can have an immense impact on us, specially in the social and economic landscape. What if the default option for the delivery of your utility bills or bank statements is email instead of paper mail? What if the default option for the enrollent in a retirement plan is inclusive instead of exclusive? What if a school cafeteria displayed the healthiest foods at the front? What if a $1 donation is a pre-selected option in a magazine renewal form? The simplest way to get more organ donors is to make the system “opt-out” instead of “opt-in”. People use the default choice most of the time, since they believe it is default for a reason.

Changing the defaults can be a powerful incentive to changing behavior. Having said that, choosing a good default is equally important. A wrong default for an array of choices can be counter-productive. Facebook’s privacy settings are a good example of poor defaults.

In the book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, Prof. Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler talk about the science of choices and defaults:

The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food. Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot.

In present day and time, we often forget that when we have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.

Michael Levine once said, “Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.” While some may own but hate a piano, a pianist only has true gratification and unconditional love for it.

A recent article in the New York Magazine, titled “All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting“, contemplates on the bewilderment around parenting. It’s a much debatable subject, that can get quiet sensitive for a lot of people.

Going through some of the reader comments at HN on the article, two candid comments struck me as something to remember. Rather than elaborating on the comments, I think it’s best to just preserve them in original as a source of insight:

Like everything in life, the thought of doing it, trumps the actual doing it. Finishing the basement, writing a novel, building the next great web app, raising kids all seem like great projects to embark on. But it’s the dark night of the soul, when you’re up for the 10 night in a row (or you have writer’s block or you realize you shouldn’t have cut that pipe, etc, etc).

Life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Speaking as a member of GenX, our lives are so damn easy most of the time, when we run into problems, we don’t know how to handle it. However, we adjust.

I just can’t imagine how grandma raised 9 kids with no ER or acute care and little money. Wars, the great depression, death of a child, she went through it all. And they did hard physical labor every day.

The thing is we adjust, it’s hard at first, but we persevere.

When you watch your kid doing something you taught him/her, that’s just not a feeling you get from purchasing a new iPad. When you sit in structure you built or use a product you built you’ll know the feeling. It’s hard to explain but in the end, it’s worth it.

In all honesty, at times I too succumb to the mounting pressure of parenting. And I wonder, like millions of baffled parents, why is parenting hard? Humans have been having babies for thousands of years under much more difficult situations, so why is it now that parenting has suddenly emerged as a stressful chore?

The lens through which parenting is viewed here is too narrow. Parenting isn’t about being happier. It is about being a bigger and better person. Children make your life BIGGER. You feel moments of happiness like you’ve never felt before. You also feel moments of anger like you’ve never felt before.

It really is indescribable and not for the faint of heart or the selfish. The beautiful thing about parenting is that it shows you who you really are (not who you think you are), and gives you chances every day to grow.

It makes you see what really matters in life, assuming you actually come to this realization. I’ve seen plenty of people not realize this and fight to keep their identity, their original idea of what they wanted for themselves while also trying to be a parent. That doesn’t work.

Part of parenting is a certain amount of ego destruction. You have to go through that if you want to genuinely care for another human being.

This is what makes the experience of parenting so great. It is a kind of Zen experience of making yourself better by destroying your concept of self (and putting another ‘self’ first more than your own self would like).

Patience is an important catalyst in parenting, just as it is in learning to play the piano or doing anything meaningful in life. Happiness, is just a by-product. I feel that parenting is not just about loving your kid, spending quality time with them, being there when they need you and providing for them. Parenting is also about letting go of self-obsession.

Another year has nearly come to an end. A new decade is set to begin. It’s amazing how time just whisks away.

What’s also amazing is how much we can learn about ourself in time just by paying a little more attention to that sound in our head. After a year of pondering and progress, mistakes and accomplishments, I felt that I should share what I really learnt this year:

1. Just do it, and more importantly, do it fucking now! Create stuff that excites you. Do stuff that scares you. And, if you think you haven’t found your passion…

2. …Procrastinate. It ain’t that bad, as long as you have a desire to start somewhere. Most people never follow their dreams because they are shit scared to open their eyes. Start small, grow organically. The key is to start. Start!

3. Never argue with a fool. They will drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience. Same goes for pseudo-intellects and pedants.

4. Health is wealth. I quit smoking for good this year. Took up swimming instead (after a halt of around 10 years). I’m nearing a kilometer of a swim daily, but what’s significant is that mentally and physically I feel rejuvenated.

5. Have positive people around you. I don’t think that people are inherently “bad”, but some people have a tendency to measuredly create naive obstacles to restrain you from doing what they couldn’t or can’t do. If you fail in your repeated efforts to make such people understand the reality, then at-least don’t react negatively yourself. One persons oasis is another persons reality.

6. Wife is always right. But that doesn’t stop me from doing what I want anyway, or so says the wifey.

7. If you are wrong, say sorry. If you are right, shut up.

8. Never do anything for money alone. Do it for a reason you believe in. Do it for your passion. Relatively, don’t be a miser but be frugal.

9. If something doesn’t excite you (makes you say HELL YEAH), then don’t do it. Family commitments are exempted.

10. The most important things in life are not things. An African saying suggests: “If you want to walk quick, walk alone. But if you want to walk far, walk together.”

11. Let bygones be bygones. The only way is forward, so move on. If others want to constantly whine on past grievances, then let them do so. Eventually, they’ll see the bigger picture.

12. The most effective productivity technique that works for me is to just have one goal in a day. If you happen to complete it, then have a second smaller goal, but never have more than one goal a day to start with and more than two goals to end with.

13. Make the World a better place. Again, this doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Don’t expect to change the World over-night. Reduce wastage. Help begins at home and neighbourhood. Start small with Kiva and World Vision. Giving is a good criterion of a person’s mental health. Generous people are rarely mentally-ill.

14. Not everybody agrees to the same things as you do. One must always respect other opinions (so please excuse my rant if you don’t really relate to much of it). Great things happen when people share their opinions, discuss them rationally keeping the larger goal in mind, and reach a simple solution. An interesting thing I took from one of my company meetings was that to make things happen (in an organization or with-in a group of people in general) you need 100% commitment but only 80% agreement.

15. Thank people.

Kudos to some really smart people like Paul Graham, Derek Sivers and many TED speakers who inspired me to prune and spruce my thoughts, and put it all to action in my everyday life.

May the New Year 2010 bring you happiness and good health. Merry Christmas.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

This beautiful Buddhist proverb is a true declaration of an open mind, a mind of a learner. Ever since I heard this proverb, I often wondered if it reflected more than what meets the eye.

A few years ago, I discussed with some friends about our quest for a “teacher”. In our individual lives, our hive-less minds, we need a teacher to guide us. We deliberated, we concurred. But we could never find the real answer. I always considered this proverb on Prima facie, until today, when I realized that I’ve been looking at it differently all along.

After reading Rands’ words on challenging oneself, the proverb made more sense:

You’re in a hurry

Maybe you’re waiting for validation. You’re waiting for that someone you respect to say, “Yes, you bright person, you should do that thing.” It was your parents when you were you kid and then it was your first boss, but now it simply needs to be you.

What you need to understand about these people that support you is that they’re not here to slow you down, they’re here to get the hell out of your way so you can brilliant. You need discover the moment when you actually know better than everyone around you — when you make the first move without asking permission.

We all long for a validation. A validation, that we are taking the right decision, the right choice, at the right time, in the right place, around the right people, and for the right cause (or effect). But we wait. We wait for the teacher to appear and validate our thought. We are spoon-fed to the teacher’s nod, or rejection.

But, the real teacher is within. The real student is within. What we seek is within. What must grow is within.

Validate yourself.

“You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master.

“For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’

When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.