Tag: productivity

Choose a Better Belief System

Akshat Rathi5 Comments

I deeply care about how I can make the most out of what I have. I obsess about efficiency and I try my best to find the tools that can help me become more productive. This post is about belief systems and how striving to have a better one in place is the least that we can do if we are serious about taking better decisions. After all, better decisions lead to more productive use of resources.

Because belief systems are something very personal, let me make this clear before I proceed. I am an atheist but I don’t have any issues with believers. I may not understand the tonnes of things that people do in the name of God but I respect people’s freedom of choice. Actually, I’ve pondered about this long enough to come to a point where I understand the need for religion in our society as it exists today (but why’s that is for another day).

So you ask, “If I am ok with all other belief systems then why am I writing this post?”

I am writing this because I think for those who really care about taking better decisions, having a better belief system is absolutely essential.

So you ask, “Why do belief systems matter to making decisions?”

A few days ago I wrote about how if we hone our instincts at a particular task, it frees up our brainpower to do more creative things. When doing a task repeatedly we can develop muscle memory and store some vital information in the sub-conscious mind, to help free the conscious mind to do more. Thus, once the instincts have been developed (like balancing the bicycle while riding) then we let our sub-conscious do most things and actively use the conscious mind to do more important/creative things (like avoiding colliding with that car in front or doing a wheelie).

Similarly, when taking decision, we rely heavily on what underpins our thought process – our belief system. Having built this belief system over the years we find ourselves in a position where we can rely on only a limited set of data points to take any decision. If you did not have a belief system (efficient or not), you would have had to gather so many more data points to take decisions on simple things like whether you should steal your neighbour’s car or not.

So you ask, “Where do better belief systems come in picture?”

Well, clearly if belief systems play such a fundamental role in absolutely everything we do then having better belief systems will help us take better decisions.

So you ask, “What makes a belief system better?”

A belief system that is based on more accurate beliefs about the world around us will help us deal with our lives better and thus make a better belief system. Aligning ourselves with how the world really works must surely lead to best data points to take decisions, no?

This brings me to the main concern of this post, I believe that believing in God is not a good system of belief because it does not agree with the world as we know it. Directly or indirectly, belief in God can make us take decisions which do not agree with the reality of our world. It can induce people to believe in homeopathy or worse, alternative medicine. It can make scientists believe in lucky charms . The list of crazies goes on…

I know what you are thinking now, “Yes, people do irrational things all the time… it won’t affect me. My relationship with God is just for having a sense of peace in my life. I won’t do these things.” We all suffer from the illusion of control, wake up.

And if you still find that certain beliefs don’t affect your decisions then it’s best to get rid of them now, for you never know when they might. It’s better to not be affected than being affected negatively, right?

Changing belief systems is hard. I know because I spent a good deal of time trying to get over the concept of karma which was an integral part of my way of thinking. No one had put it there, I’d developed it by observing those around me. But when reality struck me and the evidence stared me in the face, I couldn’t ignore it.

Of course, if you don’t agree with reality of the world as is shown by the evidence that we have then I am not going to argue with you. But if you do believe that we live in this world which follows certain rules and regulations then, with all due to respect to your belief systems, I think that you can take much better decisions in life if you don’t believe in God.

Improving productivity by finding the rate-determining step

Akshat Rathi3 Comments

The other day a lab-mate who started his PhD work with me made a neat observation. He said:

I find myself quite pleased to see how efficient I’ve become in the lab. While teaching the new student who started last week I realised that what takes them an hour and half to do, I can finish in under 20 minutes. Don’t get me wrong. I am saying this not to question the ability of the new student. Instead, I realise that having learnt the process so well, I plan my task around the rate-determining step in the process and thus, end up doing the whole task so much faster.

It’s an astute observation. I am writing this today because I think that this chemistry concept of ‘finding the rate-determining step‘ (aka the slowest step) can be applied beyond the lab to help improve our daily productivity. Let me explain through a trivial example.

On week days I have my lunch at the college hall. It can take me anything between 25 to 55 minutes to leave the lab, finish lunch and come back. The process can be broken down as below:

  • 3-5 minutes: Ride to the college from the lab
  • 5-20 minutes: Wait in queue to get the meal
  • 15-25 minutes: Eat the meal
  • 3-5 minutes: Ride back to the lab from college

If I now want to make the process productive, I need to find where can I cut down the extra minutes. The slowest step here is ‘eating the meal’ but I am going to skip optimising that because I’d like to enjoy the meal. Also, I don’t want to suffer an accident so I am going to skip optimising my cycling speed to cut down the riding time. That leaves me with ‘waiting in the queue’. I’ve observed that if I reach the college at 12.25 pm then I am usually amongst the first few students in the queue and end up getting served as soon as the hall opens at 12.30 pm. So if I make it in time then I cut my time in queue from 20 minutes to 5 minutes. I’d call this the rate-determining speed in the process and ensure that I reach at 12.25 pm. And I do just that, as Chris our head porter says, “First in the queue again, eh?”

Of course, that is a trivial example. But finding more important situations which parallel the example I gave would not be hard. Take the writing process for example. The longest step in the process turns out to be the editing. I find that if I keep on editing as I write then it takes much longer than editing at the end of finishing the first draft.

While writing about this post I also realised that I’ve been applying the ‘finding the rate-determining step’ process without actually having thought about it that way. Hopefully, this post on wards I’ll think about it in a more-structured manner.

How to beat procrastination

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Everyday before the work day starts, take a few minutes to breathe. Clear your mind and then focus on doing what needs to get done that day. Many things will pop up in your mind. From that mental list of things write down three most important things to do on a piece of paper. Then aim to get only those three things done and try to avoid any distractions while getting those done.

That’s it. It’s best way I’ve found of beating procrastination.