Magic Stone Soup

Once upon a time, somewhere in post-war Eastern Europe, there was a great famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. One day a wandering soldier came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.

“There’s not a bite to eat in the whole province,” he was told. “Better keep moving on.”

“Oh, I have everything I need,” he said. “In fact, I was thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you.” He pulled an iron cauldron from his wagon, filled it with water, and built a fire under it. Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a velvet bag and dropped it into the water.

By now, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the square or watched from their windows. As the soldier sniffed the “broth” and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their skepticism.

“Ahh,” the soldier said to himself rather loudly, “I do like a tasty stone soup. Of course, stone soup with cabbage — that’s hard to beat.”

Soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he’d retrieved from its hiding place, and added it to the pot. “Capital!” cried the soldier. “You know, I once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef as well, and it was fit for a king.”

The village butcher managed to find some salt beef . . . and so it went, through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for all. The villagers offered the soldier a great deal of money for the magic stone, but he refused to sell and traveled on the next day. The moral is that by working together, with everyone contributing what they can, a greater good is achieved.

A Super Macro Photo on a Cell Phone Camera

I just saw this amazing hack. An ingenious way to circumvent one of the major drawbacks of bad cell phone cameras. Cell phone cameras are rather dodgy when it comes to macro photography.

Cell Phone with DVD Lens

Almost every one who has been using computers for some time now will have an obsolete or redundant CD or DVD ROM drive. They are practically of no use. The idea of taking out the lens from these drives to use for the cell phone camera is a fantastic hack.

Do read the full instructions given at DIYPhotography.net. A big thanks to them for sharing this hack with the world.

Today people urge you to be enthusiastic about everything. It is fascinating for me to find out that such a common word as enthusiasm has a topsy-turvy history behind it.

The word enthusiasm comes from Greek and has a religious angle to its meaning which is very nicely hidden under the surface. For a certain time, enthusiasm was used in a negative and derogatory sense. This is certainly one of the words that has now undergone a complete transformation.

Enthusiasm – en·thu·si·asm   (ĕn-thū’zē-ăz’əm)
n.

1. Great excitement for or interest in a subject or cause.
2. A source or cause of great excitement or interest.
3. Archaic.
   1. Ecstasy arising from supposed possession by a god.
   2. Religious fanaticism.

[Late Latin enthūsiasmus, from Greek enthousiasmos, from enthousiazein, to be inspired by a god, from entheos, possessed : en-, in; see en–2 + theos, god.]

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,” said the very quotable Ralph Waldo Emerson, who also said, “Everywhere the history of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm.” These two uses of the word enthusiasm—one positive and one negative—both derive from its source in Greek. Enthusiasm first appeared in English in 1603 with the meaning “possession by a god.” The source of the word is the Greek enthousiasmos, which ultimately comes from the adjective entheos, “having the god within,” formed from en, “in, within,” and theos, “god.” Over time the meaning of enthusiasm became extended to “rapturous inspiration like that caused by a god” to “an overly confident or delusory belief that one is inspired by God,” to “ill-regulated religious fervor, religious extremism,” and eventually to the familiar sense “craze, excitement, strong liking for something.” Now one can have an enthusiasm for almost anything, from water skiing to fast food, without religion entering into it at all

It connects neatly to another word that appears in Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance. Gumption.

If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.

Gumption is the psychic gasoline that keeps the whole thing going. If you haven’t got it there’s no way the motorcycle can possibly be fixed. But if you have got it and know how to keep it there’s absolutely no way in this whole world that motorcycle can keep from getting fixed. It’s bound to happen.Therefore the thing that must be monitored at all times and preserved before anything else is the gumption.

You can of course replace motorcycle maintenance with whatever you happen to be doing right now. You should watch out for gumption traps. These are the things that drain off your gumption reservoir preventing you from reaping the benefits of aligning with your work.

Procrastination is a learned behavior. Here is a very interesting metaphor of procrastination that I ran into recently in the book The Now Habit by Neil Fiore.  I am not much of a self help book reader, however, this section on procrastination was highly recommended to me. This helps us to understand how we procrastinate. What goes on in our minds that leads us to develop habits of procrastination. I found the part very interesting and would like to share it with you here.

Imagine for a few minutes that the test or task in your life is to walk a board.

Situation A. The task before you is to walk a solid board that is thirty feet long, four inches thick, and one foot wide. You have all the physical, mental, and emotional abilities necessary to perform this task. You can carefully place one foot in front of the other, or you can dance, skip, or leap across the board. You can do it. No problem.

Take a minute to close your eyes, relax, and imagine yourself in that situation. Notice how you feel about this task.Are you scared or blocked in any way? Do you feel any need to procrastinate? Fear of failing or making a mistake cannot be an issue here, but you might find that you delay starting out of a need to assert your independence and to resist being asked to do even a simple task such as walking a board.

Situation B. Now imagine that the task is just the same, to walk a board thirty feet long and one foot wide, and you have the same abilities; only now the board is suspended between two buildings 100 feet above the pavement. Look across to the other end of the board and contemplate beginning your assignment.

What do you feel? What are you thinking about? What are you saying to yourself? Take a moment to notice the differences in your reactions from situation A. Notice how rapidly your feelings about the task change when the height of the board changes and the consequences of falling are greater. You may find yourself responding, “I’m thinking about the height. What If I fall? The consequences of falling or making a mistake would probably be death.”

Of course, while you are focusing only on the danger of falling you are losing sight of the simplicity of the task and forgetting that just a moment ago you had all the ability to do it with no problems. The danger of a mistake is now so great that you must stop to consider this threat to your life. It’s no longer just a job, a test, a project; it’s your life, your future that’s at stake. There’s no way you can be calm now; you’re already feeling the adrenaline rush of the stress response as you look over the edge, presenting to your mind and body the image of falling 100 feet. There’s real reason to fear: “If I made a mistake I would die.” Regardless of how simple the task, and regardless of how capable you are, the fear that a mistake could mean the end of your life makes it impossible to take that first step.

Ironically, on a psychological level you are often the one who raises the board off the ground by changing a straightforward task into a test of your worth, proof that you are acceptable, a prediction that you will be successful and happy or a failure and miserable. In most cases you are the one who confuses just doing the job with testing your worth, where one possible mistake would feel like the end of the world. When your early training leads you to believe that your self-worth is determined by your performance, you focus on psychological self-protection from fear of failing (and falling), rather than on just doing the job.

Situation C. In this scene you are still on the board suspended between two buildings, 100 feet above the ground. The task remains simple and you still have all the ability necessary to do it, yet you remain frozen on your end of the board. While thinking about what to do, you suddenly notice that the building supporting your end of the board is on fire.

What thoughts and feelings occur? How have you changed your focus from the previous situation? Remember, just a moment ago you were frozen in fright about the possibility of falling 100 feet. Do you find yourself thinking, “I’ve got to get across now. No time to worry about falling or doing it perfectly, I’ll do it any old way I can. Dignity and embarrassment are no longer relevant.”

A moment ago, the mere image of a life-threatening situation may have caused you stress. But notice how quickly your mind and body redirect your energy away from worry, ambivalence, and procrastination toward productive action once you’ve made a decision. (If the image of the fire was not a great motivator for you, see how your worries about the task and the dangers of falling change when you imagine that a small child is on the other side crying for your help.)

Now that you have an immediate time pressure, a real deadline, you jump into the task with both feet, doing it any old way you can. You’re no longer just facing a possibility or fear of pain and death, now you’re confronting real pain and certain death. Now you find yourself unstuck and motivated. And that’s how we use procrastination to get ourselves unstuck from a situation we created in the first place!

When you procrastinate, it’s as if you are the one raising the board off the ground, getting yourself frozen, and then lighting that fire to create the pressure of a real deadline.

First you give a task or a goal the ability to determine your worth and happiness. Through perfectionism you raise the task 100 feet above the ground, whereby any mistakes would be tantamount to death, so that any failure or rejection would be intolerable. You find yourself frozen with anxiety.You then use procrastination to escape  your dilemma, which brings the deadline closer, creating time pressure, a higher level of anxiety, and a more immediate and frightening threat than even your fear of failure or of criticism for imperfect work.

Situation D. You’re back on the board again, 100 feet above the ground. There’s no fire this time, but there is a net a strong, supportive net, just beneath the board.

What are your feelings now? Can you imagine yourself walking that board, contemplating the completion of this task? “No problem,” most people say. “I can do it now. It might even be fun. Even if I fell, I could bounce in the net.”

You now know that if you fall the worst that could happen is that you might feel a little embarrassed. Falling no longer means death. A mistake does not mean the end of the world. You can recover from any fall. No single mistake would mean the end for you. You can always give yourself another shot at the task.

It’s interesting to note how many times successful people suffer through catastrophes and bankruptcies. The successful person fails many times and bounces back; but the failure fails only once, letting that one failure become a judgment of his worth, and thus his label. Following the example of most successful people, you could fall many times, repeatedly using your net to bounce back in order to work for another success. Failure and mistakes then cannot stop you because they can’t take away your inner worth and drive.

However no book can teach you self-worth.

The detail hound micro manager

In the trenches, projects huddle together interconnected to a million details like neurons in our brains. Delays, contingencies, breakdowns and meltdowns happen when projects with perfect blueprints collide with the forces of reality.

Only in textbooks and classroom studies do projects exist alone, in their own domain, unattached to other factors of life and isolated from the interference of the forces of chaos. Glorified reports of “how we did it” tend to suffer from selective amnesia and results in simplistic process descriptions.

These process workflows are usually gobbled up and regurgitated in some form or the other by that unique beast of the trenches called the micro-manager. The micro manager gets involved with, and even dictates, every detail in the work flow process. This brings on the feeling that you are just an extension of the manager. A robotic tool to do their bidding. This leads to a huge degree of demoralization and alienation from the work in front of us. The work we care about.

What makes micromanagement so common? What attracts this behavior?

A closer look reveals that the micro management ecosystem is rich with different species of micro managers. The simple ones are those who are driven by a feeling of superiority and a need for credit. The “my way or the highway” breed simply refuses to acknowledge that other people are capable to thought.The mentor type micro manager is a curious one whose actions driven by good intentions. The perfectionist micro manager has placards declaring the virtues of excellence, and urges everyone to embrace “the perfect way”. The insecure micromanager tends to keep a close eye on everything, and attempts to walk with magnifying glasses for spectacles.

The low levels of trust lead to an unbearable heaviness while working with the micro manager. In a team, trust is the main golden quality. Everything that aims to win, keep, and build trust drives the team to move forward, and the work, to gain momentum. Constant monitoring, interruptions, dictation and evaluation leads to a breach of trust. True delegation involves the risk of allowing the opportunity for mistakes. These in turn are sometimes pointers to areas of improvement and growth.

Breaking the tyranny of mechanical processes is very much required if work has to be freed. A process which compromises trust and works towards the reduction or elmination of it is definitely a recipe for painful projects.

Loss of ownership of work is a common effect of being micromanaged. “It is not my code, it is no longer my design, this is not my baby” are some of the common cries of the victim. Motivation plummets and affected person no longer responds to situations.  A zombie feeling seeps in and every query is redirected to the micromanager as decision making abilities atrophy.

The micro manager also suffers from the effects of this working style. The successful micro manager is like a football (soccer) player who gets the ball and then tries to do everything to score all alone. Goal Keeper, Defender, Forward, all rolled into one. It is no fun for the team and burns out the manager. In the long run, the team simply disbands as the game is no longer playable.

A solution to micromanagement is to move the focus away from the process to the people. The Goal Keeper, Defender, Forward are there in those positions to play. The idea is to give them the ball and let them run with it to score. Scoring  opportunities will be missed, goal keeper might not stop a few balls, forwards might not coordinate. These are all part of the game. The idea is to help nurture the players in their positions so that they can all come together to play a fantastic game. Less talk about the game and more play will definitely help.

Being with the micro manager in the trenches is a painful predicament. However, understanding the causes and the fact that the behavior is not personal goes a long way in adapting to the situation. Sometimes, an honest and open discussion about the diminishing trust in the execution of the project helps wake up the micro manager. The micro manager is often unaware that things are not going well. From their perch, micromanagers tend to bring all their focus to the process and blank out the other important aspects of work.

I am no productivity guru. In fact, I rate myself as very average when it comes to being optimized, primed and ready for anything. Till recently, I did not realize I should have a terrific productivity system in place to feel optimized, primed and ready for anything! I often get a feeling that I missed something important while running behind that high priority to do item. Like having fun while working.

The tyranny of to-do lists is the same as the tyranny of over talkative, micro managers. Making a to-do list is planning. Planning is not doing. In fact, at some point of time, the to do list gains an upper hand over the pleasure of doing something. I might be among the minority or doing something wrong. There have been times I add an item which is fun, but when I get to doing it, the fun evaporates and vanishes.

So, I am looking to make a few changes. I honestly don’t know if there is an alternative to the tyranny of the to do list. However, since I have identified it as the main cause of my distress I am attempting a change.

The whole idea is to get back in control. To Do is no longer the prime driver of my time. In fact, I have chucked out the To Do lists. The rigidity of the list has to be replaced with the flow of activities.

Here are some ideas that I have been thinking of.

Planning is usually revealed in retrospect. Like success. Life is a complex series of events. The human mind is incapable of comprehending all the possibilities. It is impossible to factor in things according to their importance in a dynamic system like the events of everyday life. It requires constant steering and readjustments. Like a missile hitting a moving target.In a constant state of change, we need the ability to adapt, focus on what is in front of us and not what is on the horizon.

Things are never finished and finishing things is often beyond our capabilities, dependent on many external factors. Starting is within our control. We can look at the situation now and choose to start. Once we are in the present and not looking at the future or predicting/measuring how things should have been, we can concentrate on the doing.

Getting rid of the guilt by separating efficiency from ego is another step. I am not just my work. I am not just my goals. A realization that self worth comes above success, failure, efficiency, capability provides a certain level of safety to play freely with the work in front of us. This is important.

Recreation as a tool to concentrate better. We need time away from work to do quality work, enjoy work and develop a capacity to concentrate and engage with our work. This is a contrarian concept, but all artists, musicians and athletes whose work is performance will vouch for the fact that more time they spend away from work, free of guilt, the better the quality of their work.

Every time I pick up this book for a read, I end up going through it with the same enthusiasm I felt when I read it for the first time. Despite being a recurring book in my bookshelf for more than a dozen years, this book retains a freshness. The kind of freshness one feels when plunging into reading a new, interesting book. I am not a big fan of philosophical books. Dreary arguments are not the reason I pick it up to read.

There is more to it.

Reading a book is often termed by enthusiastic readers as a journey. This book is actually about a journey. In fact, about two journeys. The physical motorcycle journey and the mental one. I feel that I am rejoining and reliving the trip with the author. I simply relish this aspect of the reading.

Over the years, like an experienced traveler in the realms of this book, I have, quite unintentionally developed a mental map. This leads me to check certain parts of the book first. I think most people do this when they read their favorite books. This is most visible in children who insist on hearing the same parts of a story over and over again.

Let me point out a few of the parts that I go through in this book. I will leave the philosophy, raves, rants and evaluations for the philosophers, ravers, ranters and evaluators! I just read the book and like what it talks about.

The first interesting part (page 27) is where he talks about the spectator attitude which prevents from identifying and caring for the work we are doing. The sentences that I absolutely like are these.

“And it occurred to me there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance, the most important aspect of all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.”

Deep down, I think that all of us should wear a mental badge or cap to do something well. That cap would say what we are. I am a mechanic, I am a writer and so on. This mental identification is not as simple or childish as it sounds, The level of awareness required to do this is very difficult to maintain.

The next part I like reading is a quirky little spot (p46) where  he talks about his moldy old gloves. This whole page is interesting to read. It talks about the quirkiness of machines and their personality changes over a period of time. I can relate to that and extrapolate it not only to motorcycles but to all kinds of machines, devices, software and websites.

The groovy dimension (p57) is something I can identify with. This part of the journey is all about identifying what the other person means. Why do communications break down? Why do we look at the same thing and yet see so differently? Science and Art are ways to relate to reality.

Pages 77 to 79 is about the romantic and classical modes of thinking. The fact that both these modes have their strengths and weaknesses and much is to be gained by balancing the approach is poignantly brought home.

“These tools for example…this wrench…has a certain romantic beauty to it, but its purpose is always purely classical. It’s designed to change the underlying form of the machine.”

These words (p97) must have inspired the covers for the book. The idea of looking at work from both the classical(scientific) and romantic(artistic) mode and using this to engage with the work at hand is a powerful mantra.

Every system, every process can be systematically examined and understood. The motorcycle as a large system of concepts in someone’s mind is described beautifully in page 101.

The infallibility of relentless, unstoppable deductive and inductive logic for trouble shooting is described in pages 106 to 110. The power of the scientific method is something that is awe inspiring.

“Suppose a child is born devoid of all senses; he has no sight,no hearing, no touch, no smell, no taste…nothing. There’s no way whatsoever for him to receive any sensations from the outside world. And suppose this child is fed intravenously and otherwise attended to and kept alive for eighteen years in this state of existence. The question is then asked:Does this eighteen-year-old person have a thought in his head? If so, where does it come from? How does he get it?” (p130)

The apriori motorcycle of Kant makes an appearance in page 134. This is a favourite place for me in the book. It reminds me of the famous “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe!) painting by René Magritte.

“Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind.”

This small line appears as quote which begins one of my favourite parts in the book.

“It’s an unconventional concept,” I say, “but conventional reason bears it out. The material object of observation, the bicycle or rotisserie, can’t be right or wrong. Molecules are molecules. They don’t have any ethical codes to follow except those people give them. The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquillity it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed. The test of the machine’s always your own mind. There isn’t any other test.”

“Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you’ll see the difference. The craftsman isn’t ever following a single line of instruction. He’s making decisions as he goes along. For that reason he’ll be absorbed and attentive to what he’s doing even though he doesn’t deliberately contrive this. His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony. He isn’t following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are changing together in a progression of changes until his mind’s at rest at the same time the material’s right.”

“This divorce of art from technology is completely unnatural. It’s just that it’s gone on so long you have to be an archeologist to find out where the two separated. Rotisserie assembly is actually a long-lost branch of sculpture, so divorced from its roots by centuries of intellectual wrong turns that just to associate the two sounds ludicrous.”

It is these kind of nuggets that make me read this book again and again. Of course, there is a lot more ground to cover. I have only put together a small list of paragraphs to visit in the journey which the author take us through in the book.

The book touches some deep chord which resonates with my own desire to connect meaningfully with the work I engage in. This is perhaps the one main reason I find it a good read every time I pick it up.

“The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.”

And the message of this book has lasted quite well for more than three decades.