Eight Things to Focus On

Inspired by Jay Baldwin's book on Bucky, I urged a young audience:

In order to live a life doing projects, there are eight things you need to focus on:

1. Comprehensive Alertness: Look for problems that need to be solved. For that you need to be comprehensively, all-around alert. If you are ever bored, or uninterested, it's a sign that an important part of your mind is asleep.

2. Omni-directional Sensitivity: Learn all there is to know about the problem using the maximum utilization of all the resources you have in as less a time as possible.

3. Focused Learning is a powerful tool. Attend to what Nature is trying to do., Opposing it is futile, inefficient and is an old-mode-way of regarding the world. You may have to investigate and experiment. Total commitment is essential.

4. Back-up Support: If you are really committed to solving the problem and have no immediate "takers" to your solution, you might have to find a second job to finance your search for them. When Sûbeer Bhätiä developed "Hotmail" he had to go around to several companies before he could find someone to put up venture capital for it. The same happened to Trevor Bayliss who found no immediate takers for his brilliant idea of a wind-up radio, which needs no electricity, batteries or solar power. There is an Oxford professor who is still waiting for his idea to emerge out. He has developed a method of making and delivering a pair of vision-correcting spectacles to anyone anywhere without the hassle of locating an ophthalmologist. It bypasses the urban-located, expensive delivery system.

5. Multiple Skills: Remember, in Nature, specialization is for insects, not human beings. They have to be good at a variety of tasks. This is how Nature has designed us. Go for a specialization if you have to, but be aware of the risks. If you do not avoid excessive specialization you run the risk of becoming obsolete.

6. Proof of Concept: This is the time when you transfer your work from your think-tank to your do-tank. Can you demonstrate that you have solved the problem? Your solution should satisfy not just you and your admirers but also skeptics.

7. Calmness to Opposition: People who lay out money for your idea will invariably say: "It will require too much money." You can calmly ask, "What will it cost if we don't do it?” The answer is the true cost. In competition, your goal is inclusion.

8. Patience: Project work does not come every day, or, in regular intervals, or is available on demand. Innovations have their own gestation rate. You can't hurry a rose by opening the bud with a screwdriver. Remember that the whole Universe will take some time to accommodate the change you are planning to bring about.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a thinker who lived in the United States in the 19th century wrote some very inspiring essays. In one he says, “If a man……….. make a better mouse-trap,………… tho’ he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door”. Here is success as well as relevance! Aim for it!



-- From a speech I made to LARAMBHÄ COLLEGE, Larambhä. - 40th Annual Day Celebrations Feb. 21, ‘04