Random collections

 

 The Gutmeter Framework

Before we talk about how we make decisions on a day to day basis, I want to define a framework based on which I make decisions. 

My objective is to be happy all the time for myself NO MATTER WHAT. Whatever decisions I take, don't care how but I have to be happy no matter what. For that I'm going to use basic calculus to define what my happiness is going to be like (people from non science background - don't worry. This is super basic. It'll not fly over your head) Happiness is a feeling. It's subjective and unique to each individual. 

Let's take a simple example and I would request you to take it as a simple experiment for yourself. Imagine I ask you - I have one glass of milk on one hand and a chocolate on the other hand, what do you want? You either have an instant answer in your gut - It might be Chocolate or Milk. or you end up saying you don't prefer either or you want both. Let's assume your gut says chocolate instantly b/w the 2 options I give you. Now, I tell you I have 2 chocolates on one hand and one chocolate on the other - which would you now choose. Assume you're fond of chocolates and instantly your gut chooses 2 chocolates. The operating word that i want you to focus on is instantly. The moment I ask you, you have an answer. And some people might think about it and decide. But for this simple example, assume you choose 2 chocolates. Now I give you the 2 chocolates, you eat it and after that you're happy - that's a feeling - consider it to be like a mathematical function unique to you. Now, for this example, let's visualize this better and define the characteristics of what I call the Happiness Function or Happiness index function (This is the name i came up with when I started my theory 10 years back hence I'll be using that). Happiness is the output of your decision to have 2 chocolate. So, the output function is the happiness index function. Below are the characteristics I've defined for this function.

Now that our output is defined, let's look at our input. If you observe in the examples, I've highlighted two key words. Gut and Instantly. Before you even got a chance to actively think about it, the gut made the decision. Sometimes, the gut would want to think about it more and then it comes to a decision. In this example, the decisions came from the gut instantly. So the input for my decision making in the example above come from my gut. Assume that I want to mathematically model it into a decision making framework which allows me to maximize my output - my happiness index function. In both the examples above, the options for the gut are yes, no and no decision. Let's mathematically model it using what I call a conditional binary function called the GUTMETER function. The reason why I say it's conditional is because it's not always a yes or no. There are times where the gut stays still and doesn't give an answer. I'll explain using certain real world examples.  But first let's visualize it. 

`                                                          GUTMETER FUNCTION

In math, there exists different kind of functions. There are continuous functions, binary function, step functions etc. For the purpose of mathematically modelling my decision making input, I just created what I called the Gutmeter function. (Why the word "meter" is added will be clear shortly).  In the examples gutmeter function captures all possibilities of all options that I will have. Usually decision making comes with a time constraint. You'll have to make a decision by a particular time. In the example, let's say I have 1 chocolate and a glass of milk and you have to decide in 5 seconds. At the end of 5 seconds, you either would have chocolate, milk or neither as the options assuming that having both is not an option. At the end of the time limit, the decision making would be instant where your gutmere will give clear answers b/w the 3 options. If it's either chocolate or milk, the options are clear.  But if it is neither and the time limit is up, you might as well toss as coin and make that decision. 

Let's take a slightly more complicated decision. Assume I'm chaining you physically to a place and you can't move. And I take both your parents or both your kids. And i tell you that you don't have an option. I'm going to shoot and kill one of them. You have to decide who I am going to kill. If you don't decide, I'm going to kill both of them. Now, some people might have abusive fathers or mothers and might have particular liking towards one of their parents. If someone put me in this position and I was told I have 10 seoonds to decide, I'll look at my gutmeter and at the end of 10 seconds, I wouldn't be able to decide. My gutmeter stays still. In the picture above of the gutmeter function, you can think of it like a compass with the needle giving you direction on what to decide. In this case, for me, my needle will stay still right in the center. And if I was told I had to decide else, both my parents will be killed, i might as well toss as coin and make the decision as it is that random for me. 

My point being the gutmeter input function (which is basically your gut) captures all possible decisions you can make in any situation and if more information is given to the gutmeter, the needle direction would naturally change.

In the chocolate vs milk example, assume you're someone health conscious and your gutmeter decides milk first. At that point, that's the right decision for you to make. Now, if I tell you that the milk contains 10 spoons of sugar. That is NEW ADDITIONAL information that suddenly comes to the brain, the left brain analyses it and instantly, the gutmeter dial could change to chococate, milk despire the extra sugar or neither. Again the decision was instant. Now if I didn't tell you about the extra sugar, you start drinking the milk and instantly, you realize that you've taken sugar. Can you blame your gutmeter for deciding to take milk in the first place. That additional information was just not available. But this becomes a massive experiential learning for your brain naturally because of which next time such a situation comes up, your gutmeter will be influenced to ask the question, "Is there extra sugar in the milk?" 

Coming back to my earlier point around conditioning, society has conditioned us to think that there is right and wrong, good and bad. In the above example, if i didn't have the extra information about the sugar, and I still had the milk with sugar, was it a wrong decision to drink the milk? Agreed you had some sugar go inside your body which you consider bad but from the next time onwards for all times you have milk, you'll be on guard better. So isn't that a good thing?

Let's take one more real life example before I attempt to un-shock you of a powerful negative societal conditioning.

Case Study: Marriage

Let's assume you want to get married, you tell your parents. Parents search for an alliance and find a possible match and show the photo of some person X. They tell you that you have 1 month time to make the decision. You can talk to X, do all your research etc. 

Let's see how the gutmeter operates. Initially, when you see the photo of X. you really like it, your brain processes that information and before even talking to the person, your gutmeter says yes instantly. But then your gutmeter compass starts oscillating feeling like you want more information about the person. So, your gutmeter gives you direction to find common friends, ask about the person and when all that new information is collected, they all give good feedback. After that assume your gutmeter has a much stronger feeling about X. Now, your gutmeter gives you direction to want to talk to X. You initiative conversation and you hit it off. At the end of 2 weeks, you feel you're already in love with this person X. At that point if your parents asked you you would say Yes for sure. But your gutmeter tells you that there's two more weeks. So let's try to collect more information so your brain can analyse and make a much more informed decision. Third week done, you're gutmeter is so very convinced now. At this point is when all of a sudden the girl's parents inform you via your parents that the girl has a mental health condition and is on medication. That's suddenly new information to your brain and your gutmeter compass starts oscillating all of a sudden and it immediately points to "No. I don't want to get involved with this X person" .. but you like X so much on the other side. So, Your gutmeter points you to again collect more information. Assume you collect information from X about the condition, medication, you talk to X's doctor and at the end of 1 month, you have to finally decide. Again,  your options at that point are yes, no, indecisive. If it's yes or no, it's very clear. If your gutmeter is still, you might as well toss a coin and decide. Else, you might try to buy more time to gather even more information. But at some point you need to decide and you finally decide to marry X. 

Now, assume you ger married and you had a brilliant honeymoon. You feel you're totally in love with X. At this point, if I ask you whether it was the right decision to get married, in all probability, you'll say "Yes. This is the best decision of my life". Fair. Good for you. Now let's complicate the situation. Honeymoon phase is over and you start living with X. Turns out X is super difficult to live (nothing to do with X's mental health condition). X is abusing you. Your life has become a mess now. Agreed you had done all the research prior to making the decision of getting married but you couldn't have possibly seen this coming because nobody was there to give you feedback on how living with X is like because X has also not lived with anyone. And now you're in a situation where X is destroying your life. At this point, if I ask you whether it was the right decision for you to get married to X, in all probability, you'll say "No. This was the worst decision of my life". Now, your gutmeter made you make the decision after 1 month of evaluation. Assume we want to know whether on an absolute scale this was the right decision for you to make.. I have 2 data points you've said that I want you to think of. After the honeymoon, you felt gutmeter's decision was the best decision. Once you started living with X, you felt it was the wrong decision. Which is right on an absolute scale? My take on that is there is no right or wrong decision. You can only make decisions based on the maximum amount of information you collect within your time constraints. On an absolute scale, expecting a decision to have outcomes exactly like you want is trying to be like a God like entity where you feel you will have control over every single unpredictable variable in the future such that your decision will be right. There absolutely nothing known as right or wrong on an absolute scale. 

However, that is not how society conditions and programs you from childhood. Society conditions you to largely think that there is good and bad decision. I for instance, am convinced that I cannot say that my marriage with my wife is a good or bad decision. 

This might sound like trivial gyaan to you. But the deep rooted impact of this is after your read this article and go back to your lives, this would stay theoretical and you might not be able to imbibe it into your personal lives deeply. The larger societal conditioning that has deeply adulterated your minds from which you need to logically unshock yourself is to look at the decisions objectively, collect as much information based on guidance provided by your gutmeter and finally make the decision by your gutmeter knowing very well that this cannot be defined as the right or wrong decision. 

So, that is one conditioning that I have logically unshocked myself from over years. Think of kids. Kids don't know what's right or wrong. They make mistakes based on their gutmeter's direction and experientially learn. Say touching fire is harmful is what humans have learnt experientially. But imposing that there is absolute right and wrong sort of prevents people from having an open world view. 

Living in the moment

So the above is one conditioning I got un-shocked myself from over the last 10 years. But the first major societal conditioning from which I freed myself logically is even more deep rooted. This is when I escaped from the negative infinite loop. 

Let's come back to the functions we defined. The output is a feeling - defined by the happiness index function and input is the decision making function which I call the gutmeter function. At some point in my life due to certain powerful experiences I went through, I gave myself a super tough seemingly impossible problem - How do you create a utopian society where everyone is happy all the time whatever that means. NO MATTER WHAT everyone has to be happy all the time. I looked at it as a fun consulting assignment problem where my client is the world - Humanity - The present and future. Client has come to you with the problem that they're not sure whether the resources (people) are living life the right way. There is stress in the society. Objective is to bring down the stress levels to 0 and disruptively boom the economy and make everyone happy in the process (in whatever subjective definition of happiness people have). I didn't know where to start solving this problem. Poverty? Unemployment. I was lost. I spent 4 sleepless day making pages of case analysis notes. Happiness index function and Gutmeter functio I've defined above is from that. I'll tell you my final solution.

7 Billion people must be happy NO MATTER WHAT which means when you break it down, I must be happy NO MATTER WHAT. So I decided look at my past and look at data points where I was absolutely happy and see whether there were any patterns in my decision making styles there.

That's when I mathematically modelled Happiness function Gutmeter. I took 30+ data points from my past and observed a pattern and all the points where I was becoming happy were points in future after i made the decision. For example, I had conducted a surprise party for my parents. 2 weeks before the party, my gutmeter gave my direction to conduct the party. And after the party, after seeing my parents' face, I felt happy. Likewise, for DISCRETE points in the future i turned out to be happy, I made a decision some time before that point from my gutmeter. This was a common pattern I observed. That the gutmeter was making the decisions. 

Now comes the part where I expect people to vehemently reject. Like I mentioned, I'm just the monkey who has grabbed the banana. I'm trying to tell you it's so easy to grab the banana. So, please don't be judgemental. 

My objective is not DISCRETE happiness. My Objective is CONTINOUS happiness because I want to be happy all the time NO MATTER WHAT. This means let's try to compress time to as minimalistic as possible. Mathematically, this is termed as dt>0 which means instead of looking at discrete points in the future where you want happiness. compress time to such a small micro-nano second level, where your this pattern of gutmeter giving you direction and you putting in your maximum effort to fulfil your gutmeters direction, knowing very well that there is nothing called absolutely right decisions (no good or bad). What I mean by this on the ground is your gutmeter as a compass guides you every nano-micro second and you should BLINDLY follow it NO MATTER WHAT. Before you naturally reject this (that's your conditioning at play), hear me out. 

For me, I consider my Gutmeter to be like a separate person. This person is like a compass that guides me every time second and only way you can be happy all the time is to blindly follow your gutmeter. Natural questions  that people have asked when I''ve told them about this is what if your gutmeter tells you to kill yourself, smoke cigarettes all day, hurt someone, shout at your boss etc. Agreed. Valid thoughts. I some of these thoughts hit you, I want you to reflect for some time. These thoughts that came into you are a function of your already adulterated program in the mind. So, how can you even be sure that that is the right way to think. The bridge of logic is a path to go back to that state of mind where such thoughts don't enter your program naturally. Do you see kids thinking about suicide or cigarettes naturally? Powerful negative societal conditioning is what make the minds of adults a complicated mess. 

But think about it deeply, none of your thoughts around suicide, cigarettes, drugs, hurting people logically counters the mathematical reality that you need to blindly follow your gutmeter to make yourself happy. Let me try to convey the power of that thought which is dt>0 or compressing time to such a small measure that it is as if you've outsourced decision making to the gutmeter. What this means in reality is before you have the time to think about what to do next, the gutmeter knows what is ideal for you to do in that context whether it is choosing chocolates over milk, marrying someone knowing very well that there is nothing known as right or wrong decisions. It's like I have outsourced decision making to this person who I call gutmeter who will guide me for the rest of my life and happiness index function is the natural output.

What is my point? Society has conditioned you so deeply to think of life as discrete points of achievements in life. School. College. Good job. Promotion. Marriage. Kids. etc.Society says plan for everything in life. My point is you should be super flexible when you set goals. Say in the example I mentioned earlier about marriage, assume during the course of the 1 month, you want to be happy all the time. You just need to blindly follow the gutmeter. At the point where you get extra information about the mental health condition of X, based on your preferences, your gutmeter will provide you direction and you just need to follow that blindly. The deep rooted conditioning of making you look at life discretely is the biggest harm society has done to you. Even if you read this, I don't expect you to look at life incrementally like I do. That requires blindly following your gutmeter which requires guts. But the experiential learning based on which you learn in the process makes you happy all the time. The dimension in which you view happiness is not good or bad. To explain it mathematically, assume that the happiness you feel when looking at the world discretely is on an XY plane. (one dimension). That has ups and down in the way you feel physically and mentally and there is good and bad. When you look at it continuously, the plane on which you experience the happiness is a X'Y' plane which is another dimension. The physical and mental feelings are very different. 

Let's take smoking for example. I used to be a chain smoker. I'm still a smoker. But have cut down drastically. When I started following the gutmeter blindly, whenever my gutmeter gave me a direction to smoke, I used to smoke blindly because mathematically, that was maximizing my happiness function. People around used to tell me that I shouldn't smoke. The more the people who tell me that with different justifications, the more inputs went into my mind which influenced my gutmeter. Slowly, experientially, my gutmeter has had a reduced urge to smoke and I can tangibly feel that my smoking is coming down. Important part to note that is that when I smoke I'm convinced that's the most logical thing to do because I believe my gutmeter to be always logical. You might say that smoking has health concerns and all that.. Well. Smoking increases productivity for me, Releases stress which I can use productively in work in help others. Imagine if a doctor who is really good uses smoking a stress relief which helps him saves lives. Suddenly, smoking doesn't seem so bad doesnt it? Point being there is no good or bad, right or wrong.

The bigger societal conditioning from which I broke free 10 years back is what the thought of dt>0 helped me - Life needs to be looked at incrementally. Not long term planning. LIVE IN THE MOMENT> FOLLOW YOUR GUTMETER BLINDLY> BE HAPPY ALL THE TIME

Does this mean that you should not think about the future and only think about the present?

No. It is completely fine to think about the past and the future in the present moment. At time t1, it is completely fine to think about a future moment or past moment and think more about it. But ACKNOWLEDGE that when you think of something at time t1 to do or achieve at time t2, the time difference t2-t1 might bring in information to your brain which influences your gutmeter to change the decision about what you want to do at time t2. This is spontaneity and living in the moment. This is how your future will get planned naturally when you live in the moment.

To summarize this post, we covered Gutmeter, Happiness Index function and d2 important negatively powerful societal notions that impact people on a daily basis

1. There is good and bad, right and wrong - that's an illogical notion that's built into our minds

2. You need to have discrete long terms goals which define your life. This changes your world view on how you should ideally be looking at happiness.

I also talked about dt>0 as what I believe the most powerful thought that's hit me, coz that helped me outsource all my future decisions to my gutmeter making me happy throughout.

In the post titled "Learned Helplessness in Everyday life", I discussed that we'll be covering 5 every examples and looking at how decision making can ba made using the gutmeter. In this article, I've covered Marriage and Smoking. Next up, we'll be looking at how conditioning is prevalent and affects us in even simple decisions like brushing your  teeth, sleeping at night and what is more interesting would be for a larger audience - how businesses should ideally be run. 

Practical Daily Examples

Learned Helplessness in Everyday Life

5 Monkeys Experiment:

Let me start this post with a simple psychology experiment that was conducted on monkeys. 

5 monkeys were put in a cage. A banana was placed in the center on top of a ladder. Anytime any of the 5 monkeys went for the banana, all 5 monkeys got a cold shower/shock. After a while, anytime any monkey tried grabbing the banana, the remaining 4 pulled it down. The equilibrium state of this experiment became all 5 monkeys realizing there's the shock that they'll be subjected to, hence none of the 5 monkey went for the banana regardless of the temptation. 

Now one of the monkeys is replaced with a new monkey. The new monkey has absolutely no idea about the shock so goes for the banana. The old 4 monkeys don't let the new monkey go for the banana regardless of how many times the new monkey tries, even though the new monkey hasn't gotten any shock yet. And a second new monkey is brought in and another old monkey is replaced. And the other monkeys don't let the 2nd monkey go for the banana (Even the 1st new monkey joins the group of the old monkeys). This continues until all 5 monkeys are replaced with 5 new monkeys and none of them go for the banana. Now, imagine the actual shock is removed from the system. The final state is where there is the banana on top, no shock in the system and the 5 monkeys are just walking around in the cage not knowing why they're not going for the banana. If you ask them why they're not going for the banana, they'll probably say "That's just the way things are done over here"

In layman terms, this phenomenon is loosely tagged as societal conditioning. In psychology, this is called learned helplessness and there's a whole theory behind this which we'll not be getting into. Below video give a visual representation of the same.

Learned Helplessness

Case Study: Sati

Let me give you a real life example of this. Sati - the social evil that was in practice years back where widows jump into the fire of their husband's pyre. Let's see how deep rooted impact of conditioning here. There are many theories around how Sati came into practice. One of the popular theories is as follows. Husbands used to go fight in wars and get killed. This led to the rulers/kings taking advantage and raping and killing the widows. That was the logical shock/cold shower equivalent taking the monkeys experiment analogy. 

The equilibrium situation was widows found it more honorable to die in the fire of their husband's pyre than waiting for getting raped and killed. Gradually the rulers went away (shock was taken out of the system) But the practice became so deep rooted in society over so long that just like the 5 new monkeys, people accepted that "That's just how things are done around here" This simple example shows how powerful the negative impact of conditioning can be. 

Conditioning Affects Everybody

I personally believe that the universe releases us from our mother's womb with a super pure state of mind with access to infinite potential. I also believe that the universe loads the same program onto the minds children when their program. What I mean by that is their fundamental thinking style is similar. Can I prove this to you. Well. Not accurately. But for the sake of discussion, observe very young kids. Their general behavioral pattern is so genuine and pure. Beyond that, I don't have scientific proof. But let's take that as an assumption for the sake of this article. 

From the time you're born in the world to the time you die, your mind is adulterated with a ton of societal notions. That is, you are conditioned by society. The extent to which everyone gets conditioned depends on your personal context and experiences, family and friends who condition you etc. This conditioning creates limitation and boundaries in your mind and prevents you from accessing your infinite potential. From a mathematical point of view, the pure universal program everyone was loaded with when they entered the universe gets adulterated by conditioned thoughts changing the fundamental thinking style/program from the naturally designed program. In that sense, if the absolute state of mind is the right way to think, everyone who is conditioned by society is mentally blinded, for the lack of a better word with everyone having their own styles of decision making. This means that I am mentally blinded, you are mentally blinded and everyone around is mentally blinded and we're all living in a world filled with mentally blinded people. Why did the world turn out this way? That's a separate question altogether and let me try to answer that at the end of this article. 

If you realize that you're thinking style/operating program is far different from when you were a young genuine kid and want to get back to your old pure unadulterated state, you need to think of a logic. A super-powerful logic, strong enough to cut through and shatter all the illogical conditioning that has affected your mind from the time you were born. Imagine this logic to be like a bridge. This bridge of logic will take you from your current adulterated program back to the universally designed absolute pure state of mind where simple things make you genuinely happy.

For you to think of any logic to travel take you through the bridge of logic, you'll need to think. But for you to think, your operating program is already flawed. So to get out of that, you again need to think which is again a function of your adulterated program running you and this is a vicious negative infinite loop from which there seems to be no escape. 

Now assume that I have figured out that powerful logic. I've worked on a theory over the last 10 years for this. Why me? Pure luck. I was just randomly lucky enough to go through a set of experiences that made me think a particular way. Sharing my entire theory is extremely elaborate and  people with limited attention spans might have the entire theory fly over their head because it challenges all conventional norms. I'm sharing some parts of the theory here which I find will be relevant for a larger audience. 

Go back to the monkey experiment example. If someone was to logically convince the 5 new monkeys that the banana is actually in their reach, they'll have super massive internal resistance to that logic. Likewise, when I tell you this, I don't expect an overnight journey for my audience through the bridge of logic. You'll also have massive internal resistance to reject my thoughts. Take whatever i'm saying with a pinch of salt, analyse it for yourself and make your decision. I'll be covering 5 specific everyday decisions and analyzing how to most optimally make them. 

1. How many times should you brush your teeth daily?

2. How many hours should you sleep dailly?

3. Is smoking bad for your life? How many cigarettes can you smoke daily?

4. How do I know whether my partner is the ideal partner for me?

5. How should businesses ideally be run?

This post is already getting long. Hence, people genuinely interested in this, please move on to my next post where I'll be covering the fundamentals of my theory which you can imbibe in your day to day life easily. Click on link below

 The Gutmeter Framework

JAM adventures

 Jo and Merin Adventures

Global Traffic Congestion Solution

 Solving for Global Traffic Congestion

Traffic congestion in cities across the world is real in terms of economic and non-economic impacts. Economic impacts include productivity loss, fuel wastage costs, impact on businesses and logistics and a lot more. Non economic impact can be in the form of health impact or even at a ground level, lives lost because of ambulances not being able to reach hospitals on time. 

Economic impact can be measured by doing a detailed estimate, making assumptions backed by data. For a major city, this is in the range of billions of dollars which several reports can corroborate. Non-economic impact in terms of lives lost can also be measured. 

Hence,  it is imperative for us to solve this problem. 

This is a problem that affects me as well. So, just as a fun thought experiment , I decided to attempt solving this problem. And I believe I've cracked it. Below I'm sharing my case analysis. It's a 47 minute video. For a really hard problem like traffic congestion, unfortunately, I am not in a position to articulate my thoughts in a short 2 minute summarized version. Would love for you to go through the video when you have free time. It's just 3/4th of an hour - roughly about the time you might be waiting in traffic in total today or even a netflix episode. 

Please watch and give feedback. If you like it, requesting you to please share this blog link (not just the youtube video) with your friends and family. 

Imagine if is a realistic solution and it reaches the ears of your local municipality earlier- you could possibly use the time you save from traffic congestion to spend more time with your family, or you could meet friends and what not. So, if you like it, please do share :) 

How do i need your help?

I need your help in analyzing whether this solution is practical. That is about just watching the video and letting me know feedback via Linkedin.

If you like the solution, do like, comment and share the blog link. Imagine you like the solution and share it with your network by strongly vouching for it and imagine they share it with their network again strongly vouching for the solutions suggested in the video, this logic will run on an infinite loop and the hope is that it will eventually reach traffic researchers who are looking at ways to reduce congestion or people in positions of authority take notice of that and then they're in a position to take action on the solution I've suggested.

As an individual, I have limitations. Best i can do is to stretch my mind to find the solution which i believe I've done. The implementation is a team effort. And for that I need your help.

 

Gratitool

In one of my strategy lectures in B school, the professor said that according to certain management literature, around 30% of the success of a company is attributed to the "Firm" effect, referring to how well the company uses its resources, technology etc. 10-15% is attributable to the "Industry" effect referring to the nature and structure of the industry the firm operates in. When a classmate of mine asked the prof what the remaining 55-60% of the success is attributable to, the prof said we're yet to develop statistical tools to explain for this part of the success. I believe this component of success is pure LUCK and luck is a component a lot of people take for granted.

Why am I talking about luck?

Taking the analogy of the company to an individual's life, I believe his/her/their happiness is a function of personal effort(firm effect), the supporting environment(industry effect) and a good chunk of luck. Hence to tap into an individual’s total happiness, the individual should not only be bothered about their personal contributions and effort but also be grateful for this luck. The value of gratitude comes from acknowledging luck as a contributing factor in one’s life.

I thought of a tool which I call GRATITOOL (gratitude tool) which helps me tap into my total happiness by increasing my gratitude levels. Yes. It's slightly philosophical but hear me out.

What is it? Simple tool to increase your gratitude level to help you tap into your total happiness

How does it work?

For every person who comes to you with a problem or anyone you meet on a day to day basis for that matter (from work colleague to house help), actually visualise yourself in their position. I mean ACTUALLY visualise yourself in their position. Would just take a few nano seconds. It was because of pure luck that you are where you are and they are where they are. You could as well have been in their position. What would the real you(using the gratitool) have wanted to do for the other person is what you should actually do. Once you start helping the other person, it starts generating happiness in them. This leads to the luck/gratitude component of YOUR happiness increasing pushing you to use gratitool even further. This drives you to continue to help the other person, which makes them even happier which further increases your luck/gratitude component of happiness and this pattern runs on a happiness loop infinitely increasing your total happiness

And what's the physics of gratitool?

Assuming we've all been created from the same energy source, it means all our energies are connected. When you help someone, that creates positive energy in them which makes them happy. Since all our energies are connected, the positive energy from the other person flows through this energy connection and feeds back to you creating positive energy in you which makes you happy and this makes you want to help the other person further and this goes on an infinite loop. I believe that's why you feel good when you help others.

Various religions and philosophies talk about this concept but makes it seem as if it has to be MANDATORY that one has to be selfless/go out of their way to help others. This encourages the thought process that if your act is not selfless, you’re losing out on happiness and in turn generates guilt. Many people are not aware/discount the gratitude component of happiness. This alternate perspective of looking at the same is pure physics, seems more logical and easy to implement for me and I hope for you as well.

When you're aware of luck, more importantly acknowledge it as a contributing factor in life and then give back to society by helping others, you're tapping into an alternative source of happiness. That I believe is the link between awareness of luck and happiness. Think of this as a mind hack - a different way of looking at things - in my case, I consider myself selfish for my own total happiness that I help out people with an intent of feeling the luck/gratitude part of my total happiness as well.

Gratitool and the physics of it might sound interesting, but could be challenging to implement. For adults who've already lived life a particular way, it's difficult to change the programming in their mind, although definitely possible. Gratitool would be helpful particularly to mold children with a service mindset, which will help them look at happiness through a different lens.

I know this is debatable. But this helps me. Just like kickstarting a car, it used to be a forced act in the beginning to kick start my mind with gratitool. After all, one's mind is far more complicated than a machine. Changing behavior is difficult and time taking. Over the last few years, I've used gratitool and slowly it has started to become second nature. Try using this tool and let me know if this is of any benefit in the comments/DM me and let me know your views on this perspective.

Cheers!

#positivepsychology

#gratitool

Consulting Beyond Business: Exploring Social Interactions

Ever since B school, I've been solving complex open ended business problems using logic, data and frameworks. Back then, I also loved using similar frameworks to solve and deal with simple sounding yet challenging real world non-business oriented problems. One such problem that intrigued me then was around the "Art of Conversation".

A common concern my friends/peers voiced was the inability to initiate a conversation with someone they found attractive in select social settings. I analyzed this as a fun consulting challenge and formulated a framework which helped some of my friends and tada! I turned out to be their "Pickup Consultant"(for a lack of a better word). Thought I'd just share this framework for the fun of it.

(Disclaimer: This post is not targeted at objectifying people. Strategy/Framework suggested is just an example of a mind hack)

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Imagine a girl (Let's call her X) and a guy (Y) sitting across a bar. Y finds X attractive and wants to go and talk to her and see where fate leads them. However, Y is facing a roadblock.

Lack of Adequate CONFIDENCE. That's the root cause problem.

We'll be going through a framework in an attempt to solve this fundamental problem. In a consultant's language. the problem statement for the client we're solving is :

"Increase the confidence levels of the insecure not-so-confident client Y above the threshold limit required to make a move on the target X"

Before we get into this framework, there are 2 assumptions and a story that are fundamental to this solution.

Assumptions

Assumption 1. Y has the minimum threshold confidence to talk to X. (Yes, I know, that's what we're trying to solve for, but stay with me for a bit - you'll see that we'll nullify this assumption as we go along)

Assumption 2. Y will pursue X only if Y finds X interesting. With Assumption 1 in place, Y will drop pursuit of X at any point Y finds X not interesting enough.

Story

With both assumptions holding, This is a story which Y will be narrating to X. The story goes as below.

"Actually, I'm from the future. 50 years from now. In the future, I met with an wise wizard who granted me the wish to come back to any point time I wanted with all the learnings and knowledge I had till then. I asked my then life partner when and where I should come back to"

That's the story. I know it's quite abrupt/eccentric. But that's by design. Later you'll realize that you can plug in any better narrative you wish, but this story can do the job for the solution/framework, into which we'll dive in next.

The Solution | The Pickup Framework

Just to refresh, the pre-requisite for this framework is we have 2 assumptions and 1 story narrative. Since Y has the confidence to go talk to X, let's design the conversation ahead and break down all possible scenarios.

Step 1. Y approaches X. Says "Hi. I noticed you from across the table. Can I get you a drink?" or "May I join you?" etc. There are 2 possible answers here.

Step 1.A X says "Yes".

Highly unlikely response but still possible. In this scenario, Y wins the game.

Step 1.B X says "No". This is the more likely and probable scenario. Go to Step 2.

Step 2. Y says "Well. That was the answer I expected. Before I leave, I'd like to tell you something very interesting. Can you spare just 2 mins of your time?". Now, let's look at the possibilities

Step 2.A X says "No. Not interested"

Remember our Assumption 2 ? Y should drop pursuit if he finds X un-interesting. In this case, as X cannot even spare 2 mins to listen to something interesting, Y can conclude that X is not interesting enough for him. Hence, he should drop pursuit and he is better off / WINS.

Step 2.B X says "Yes. I can give you 2 mins" Now Y has an opening. This is where the story we crafted comes. Y needs to deliver the story. And at the end of it it, Y says "You know what? When I was discussing with my then life partner what point in time should I come back to, she said come to the day we first met for the first time which is why I'm here talking to you. You wanted us to save the 6 months of the cat and mouse pursuit we went through before we got together. So, yeah. Would you let me get you that drink I offered?

 There are multiple possibilities now. We explore them in Step 3.

Step 3A: X completely buys the story (probability is extremely low but possibility still exists :P which is a little concerning to be honest). She says "Yes" Y WINS

Step 3B: X feels it is indeed a very lame unrealistic story but an interesting way to make a pitch. She is interested and says "Yes". Again Y WINS

Step 3C: X feels it is a very lame story and a dumb way to make a pitch. She says "No". Before Y jumps into a conclusion on whether to pursue X further or not, Y needs to make one final attempt. So let's move onto Step 4

Step 4: Y tells X - "Ok. This was expected. I guess we'll just wait for time and destiny to naturally bring us together in 6 months. :) . I'd hate to come back again in another 50 years. You sure you don't want to grab a drink and save us both a great deal of time?"

Step 4A X says "ok. Sure. I'll let you buy me a drink". Y wins

Step 4B X says "Not interested" Coming back to our Assumption 2, now it's safe for Y to assume that if X cannot appreciate an interesting pitch, then he's better off not pursuing her further. So even in this case, Y wins!

An interesting observation you would have made is Y wins the game at every level of the process. The thought that whatever be the scenarios, "Y would always be better off "creates a confidence feedback loop which generates the necessary minimum threshold level of confidence required to make the move. Hence, our Assumption 1 that the minimum threshold confidence exists is validated

As mentioned, the crux of this solution/mindhack is not the story/narrative. It can be modified if you're able to create a better one. This is just the first story I came up with. People have used it directly. Few have modified it to suit their taste. And interestingly, most of them did not even have to use the story because the sheer thought gave them sufficient confidence to go talk to the other person. The beauty of looking at this problem this way is that you know what to think, what to do and what to say for every "No" that can possibly come from the other side. Point is that the confidence increase has happened naturally.

What happens after the conversation is initiated is outside the scope of analysis of this discussion.

Till now, we've been trying to solve the problem for Y. Let's just quickly look at what are the stances for X before wrapping up this post. In case someone comes to X with this pitch,

1. X is already committed and not interested in the conversation. X can just say "No". Y knows how to handle the "No" with the strategy discussed above. So it is a WIN WIN for both as both parties are acting in their best interest.

2. X is single and not interested. X says No during any point in the conversation. X is happy. Y is happy - Again WIN WIN

3. X is single and interested. X says Yes. Again WIN WIN for both.

Below is a flowchart of the framework discussed.

In wrapping up, let's remember: life's too short for missed connections and overlooked opportunities. Like any savvy consultant faced with a complex problem, the art of conversation demands a blend of strategy, courage, and a touch of whimsy. This approach isn't just for sparking dialogue with a stranger—it's a life hack for navigating the myriad challenges we encounter daily. By reframing our fears as opportunities for growth, we can conquer not just social anxieties but any obstacle, armed with nothing but our wits and the willingness to take that first, daring step.