Waiting for people?

Why do people not give proper time estimates?

I’ve faced this problem with a lot of people. They say they’ll take 15 minutes when they actually take 45. They say they’ve left the house and will be there in 5 minutes when they are just going to go for a bath. This is not something you can give a benefit of doubt for - these time estimates are completely off the mark!

The question is – why do people do this. I can think of 3 broad reasons.

1. They think the other person is stupid and would not be able to figure out that they were lying. In which case they are stupid to discount other people so much.
2. They really have no sense of time and hence absolutely no clue as to how long will they actually take. In which case again I think they are a little light in the head and should try to look at the watch more frequently to get an estimate of how long they actually take. For e.g. how long do they actually take from thinking about taking to bath to reaching their friends place. Then they’ll be able to make better time estimates.
3. Or, they are too scared to admit right away that they are damn late and hence try to postpone admitting that. Again, doesn’t say very highly about them.

For some people, everything will take 2-5 minutes. People should realize the difference between 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes and 30 minutes. It would help them in the long run.

New experiences

I recently had the opportunity to interact extensively with a new kind of people. The kind of people who, till now, I was easily able to avoid till now.

The kind which I didn’t like as they were not straight forward. This kind is unable to say anything directly and clearly. They will put up the most fake face in front of you. They’ll be all nice to you, but its not hard to see that things are not as they look. They cannot say anything directly. Everything will go in a round-about way.

What is interesting is that they are not even that good at putting up masks. You’d think that if they did it all the time, they would at least be good at it. But obviously they aren’t.

What is worse is that interacting with such people can make you bad too. You don’t feel like talking straight to them and giving it that easy. You intentionally want to twist it around for them – probably they love to twist as that is the way they would like it too!

I realized that I’d been able to conveniently avoid such people as I always had the choice to choose the people I want to make friends with/ live with. But in a foreign country that choice is often limited.

The truth about bitching

The truth is very simple – bitching is therapeutic, stress relieving, entertaining and relaxing. It’s everything which one can want from a conversation at times (not always definitely), when you want to lighten your mood and not really rack your brains and think. The reason why people view bitching in such a negative light is simply cause they don’t understand the therapeutic value of bitching, either cause they’ve never experienced it or cause guilt gets the better of them and prevents them from experiencing it. If people can simply take bitching for what it is – something frivolous and entertaining, and not something which you believe in seriously, or care about, or some truth of this world, they would be able to rid themselves of any guilt feeling associated, and truly enjoy its benefits!

Recognizing Globe

I know this is getting too much on the MBA front, but I can’t help it - I am doing an MBA. Hence, you would have to deal with some more MBA articles over the next 1 year.

We all know, or think, that MBA’s are really good at ‘Globing’. Now, while I can say those capabilities are slowly improving (not sure if MBA is the reason – maybe I was anyways going to get at it) I have learnt another thing – ‘recognizing globe’. While earlier, some speaker might have seemed impressive simply cause of his smoothness, I am now able to look beyond the smoothness into the content of what he’s talking and recognize whether it’s ‘globe’ or not.

P.S.: I am not sure if this is a great thing. The pressure to label anything as globe is so high, that everything anyone says is by default globe. Only if the speaker says something really impressive is he labeled as non-globe. Discounting everyone’s views for globe is probably not that good a thing.

P.P.S. : If you think this is globe, that is ok. Like I said, I am getting better at it!

Credits : This article’s foundations were laid during a conversation with friends, who I shall call ‘AB’.

Something I didn’t expect an MBA would teach me..

Learning to not be punctual
Working in teams here and calling team meetings every now and then has actually taught me the lesson of what everyone refers to as ‘IST’ very well… Much better than whatever I had learnt about it all my life. It’s possibly because one doesn’t expect it to be like that here. For a one hour meeting, there is no way that every team member would be present within 10 minutes of the official meeting start. Why does this happen? The lack of time makes people want to optimize their time utilization. Since everyone has learnt, like me, the prevalence of IST, they try to be the smart one, by coming late, thereby saving their time. It’s like a game theory – everyone wants to be the last one to reach to minimize their time wastage. What happens because of this? First you come 2 minutes late, but someone else came 3 minutes late. Next time you come 4 minutes late and the cycle continues, and very soon, IST comes into play. Sadly enough, I too have started playing this game theory, though I am not so good at it - even after all my calculations, I am rarely the last one!
Or maybe it’s cause I dislike the last one’s so much that I don’t want to be one myself!

Redbull shoos away sleep??

A friend of mine thought that drinking some Red bull would help him stay awake and do some studying. Sadly enough the 3 times he did drink one, he slept off within 30 minutes. Here’s why I believe it happened. The reason why someone is awake (when sleepy) is cause of some strong determination to not sleep. When you drink a Red bull, you think that that determination is no longer needed as the Red bull will make you non-sleepy. However, a Red bull is only so much powerful. So it’s only able to work for those 30 minutes, after which nothing is working to keep you awake – neither the Red bull, nor your determination.. and hence the outcome! So next time you have one, I’d suggest don’t trust it, still try to stay awake using your willpower and then maybe the Red bull (??) will keep you awake!

Pets – is it fair?

We all love animals, at least that’s what most people claim. More so, people who love animals also like to keep them as pets. I too once kept a pet – a rabbit. I found it really cute and decided to give it a shot. However, after some time I realized that I was unable to keep the rabbit happy. Probably the rabbit just missed other rabbits. Or maybe it was just me. Overall, I realize that as much as I like animals, it’s just not fair to keep them as pets, that too alone. It’s about as bad as keeping them in a cage. Some animals, specially dogs seem to do fine with human attentions, they can probably related to them and interact them. But animals lower in the food chain, with lesser developed senses, like rabbits, fishes, turtles, birds, are not able to connect. You may be taking the best care possible, but you are a human at the end of the day!