Manoj's Review on Books

In a world driven towards specialization, what’s the value created by a generalist in the real world. Jack of all trades but master of none is a statement to undermine the importance of a generalist by projecting them as superficial, however there are enough evidences that showcase them as essential elements to solve complex problems purely by them function of breath, which is what David Epstein terms as range. There are critical questions that David tries to answer, Does one need to narrow down early in his career and specialize? Are experts able to solve all the problems related to their field? If so, why do you need organizations like Wazoku crowd which flags unsolved industry related problems with the expectation that someone from the public can solve it. Are we expected to experience kind or wicked environments through the course of our lifetimes?   If it’s a kind environment, can’t AI perform better than humans? As a toddler, Tiger Woods exhibited enormous talent wh...

The ebbs and flows of life does derail a majority of us off the track and diametrically shifts the direction of thought, mostly for the worse. Within the said context, it helps a lot when we have the tools to discard unresourceful thoughts mixed with deep emotions and replace them with resourceful ones, needless to say that it’s an ongoing and dynamic process. Let’s start with the most defining component of our lives which is termed as perception. “There is no such thing as reality, only a perception of reality” stated by an renowned Indian-American author, Deepak Chopra. It means that an event occurs due to a combination of blocks that we are able to perceive while subliminal ones are not even factored. Another person can bring up an alternate point of view which can totally shift the perception of reality. Should we admire at the depth of dimensions or rue at the limitation of human senses? When we follow it up by what Sadhguru states, we get a broad picture of perception. He say...

The Importance of being Earnest is a farcical comedy play staged during the fag end of 19 th century, it’s set up against the cultural backdrop of London. Apparently, Oscar Wilde has produced three other successful plays which led to another resounding play centered around the fictitious character Earnest. Six key characters drive the entire storyline – Jack Worthing and Algernon who are men in the age of finding a spouse for themselves, Augusta who is probably in her fifties bound with the culture of her era, an attractive women Gwendolen, pretty teenager Cecily and mistress Prism. There are few more characters involved but they play minor role across the scenes. Jack and Algernon misrepresent themselves as Ernest to woe their respective sweethearts. To their delight both the ladies fall in love with their prospective partner assuming them to have been christened Earnest. The situation takes a deadly turn as both the ladies unexpectedly meet each other exposing the fictitious cha...

Concentration camp (1939-45) in Auschwitz which is in the southern part of Poland highlights the devilish nature of mankind. A quick look at the numbers will elucidate the trauma each of the captured civilians, prisoners of war or jews had to undergo. A total of 1.3 million who belonged to the non-German creed were captured, out of which 1.1 million were murdered in the concentration camp. This would give an inmate roughly 1/10 th of a chance to survive the brutal treatment met out to them. Under the influence of concentration camp, which disregarded the value of human life and made each inmate an object of extermination. The only reason a Schutzstaffel guard left a prisoner alive was to extract every ounce of physical resource in each of them. With the given background, every prisoner lost his sense of being an individual and identified himself as a part of the pack, regressing to an animal form of life which can be herded around. In short, the man has retreated himself to a primit...

Cognitive error is a failure to think clearly under various conditions which is widespread amongst learned, intellectual or regular section of people. Rolf Dobelli has elucidated 99 of such scenarios wherein irrational side of human behaviour is exhibited. There isn’t a specific flow to the narrative but the idea is around picking different scenarios wherein we are easily lead to an irrational decision. I have highlighted a bunch of interesting bias Survivorship Bias – People overestimate the chance of success and negate super significant failure rate. Setting out to become movie stars, starting a new firm or path towards national team selection has a significant error in misjudgment on their chance of succeeding. The failure rate of start up is 90% and 10% of them don't even survive a single year in business. External Illusion – Models are signed up for cosmetics ads because they score highly on beauty aspect and didn’t attain the same through cosmetics. However, the viewers...

One of the most engaging books I have read till date, goes to show how much the attention of the audience can be grabbed when there is a clear sense of why. Simon Sinek’s premise of the entire book is to have a consistent long-term purpose towards business initiatives, which is what he has repeatedly been calling out as start with why. The fulcrum of the narrative is to start an engagement with a strong sense of why while the how and what aspect should emerge as a tangible proof of what the organization believes in, which is coined as the golden circle. Samuel Langley, a  professor of Smithsonian  institution, inventor of bolometer, a renowned individual who tasted success for his proof of concept on objects that could fly short distance way back in 1900’s. The US government realized the potential and funded him 50,000 USD which could easily measure up to 50 million USD in current valuation, Langley hired the best talent in the country and got the attention of press as well. P...

The bus picked me up at 11:20 pm at Banashankari bus stop and stopped in a few more places to pick the remaining trekkers. In about an hour, I was surprised that a 50 seater bus was full with youngsters, the broad age range would well be within 18 to 24 years and the enthusiasm was evident. Once the last section of trekkers were picked, the back row group started playing music using their Bluetooth devices and voiced over the songs which were predominantly in Hindi. The songs were sung in loud fashion until the bus stopped for refreshments 2.5 hours latter and the group was truly living up to the back benchers tag. Am 39 years of age as I write this blog, may well be the oldest in the group and it has been a long time since I experienced such high energy amongst a group of people. The trek started at 4 am from Skandagiri base point and I was leading with the guide for a significant portion of the trek. About 20 minutes into the trek, I could sense it was tough and scale of difficulty w...