Dealing with Decision Dilemma

Every decision shapes our future. However, we often face situations where decision making becomes very difficult and we are not sure if the decision taken is correct. We are caught up in the decision dilemma. Recently, I came across a talk that gave a practical approach to solve this dilemma. Here, I share my understanding of this approach.

1.     Decide to Challenge

Most of us live our lives like a traveler who doesn’t know from where he came, where he is going and why is he on the train. We simply follow others like herds of cattle. So, the first thing one has to do is to challenge the ‘status quo’ and other’s definition of success. You must find your own definition of success. You must pause and ask: “What is it that will give me ultimate fulfilment and happiness in life?” Look around and check if those, who have reached the top of their respective career following common belief of success, enjoy ultimate fulfilment and happiness. It is possible that you may not figure it out on your own.

2.     Decide to Consult

It is time to look for external help. This help may come from reading inspiring books, listening to motivational talks, or consulting someone who radiates happiness around. Such reading and consulting will open your eye of wisdom through which you can clearly see your ultimate goal in life. Maintain this relationship with books and mentors throughout your life.

3.     Decide to Connect

Having defined the ultimate goal of life, take every decision that is connected with this goal. This is the best use of your available time, energy and resources. Don’t give up what you want most for what feels good now. Temptations born out of old habits will lure you towards immediate pleasures, thus draining your precious limited assets. However, your conviction on the ultimate goal will help you steer out of such pitfalls. Test every decision by asking: “Will it help me move towards my goal?”

4.     Decide to be Courageous

Drop all doubts, hesitations, fear and anxiety while pursuing your goal. Once you mentally surrender to the goal, you will be filled with the required courage to overcome all barriers. Take risk, if you must, to progress on the path. Enjoy the thrill of breaking out of your comfort zone. Every time you step out of your comfort zone, you get stronger and matured. Life will continuously test your strength by posing challenges on the way. Reward of winning a challenge is a bigger challenge. A player wins a tournament by consistently winning over increasing challenges through the tournament. Play the game of life in this spirit while enjoying every challenge.

Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) Scary?

While the media is abuzz with the application of AI in almost every fabric of our personal and professional lives, people are worried about being replaced by the robots in the not so distant future. Is this going to be true? Will the robots rule over humans?

Let us first decipher what does Artificial Intelligence mean? Artificial intelligence (AI) is a term for simulated intelligence in machines. These machines are programmed to "think" like a human and mimic the way a person acts. Artificial intelligence is based around the idea that human intelligence can be defined in such exact terms that a machine can mimic it.

Let us now look at how human intelligence works.

Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie in their book, “The Book of Why” explain. Human intelligence essentially works in three ways: Seeing or Observing, Doing or Intervening and Imagining; retrospection or understanding.

Through observation, we associate the observed fact with a conclusion or belief. In this approach, we limit ourselves to the passively collected data and try to find a pattern which may help us predict a conclusion.

Through doing or intervening, we mentally try to change the observed data, which is the basis of prediction. We ask, “What would be the result, if I did something else? Or, how can I make this happen?” No amount of passively collected data can help us answer such questions. And yet, we humans often use this approach effortlessly in making-up our minds.

Through imagining, retrospection or understanding, we go back in time, change history, and ask, “What would have happened, if I had not taken that job?” Passively collected data become ineffective to answer such questions. We cannot run an experiment of denying job to a person who has already worked on that job and compare the results. Yet the human mind makes such explanation-seeking inferences reliably and repeatedly.

George Bernard Shaw has famously said, “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

Now the question is, “Can this vast human intelligence be defined in such exact terms that a machine can mimic it?” If yes, we have reasons to fear AI.

Presently, machine learning programs (including deep neural networks) operate almost entirely in an associational mode. They are driven by a set of observations to which they attempt to fit a function. However, complex this function may be, raw data still drives the fitted function. The programmed driverless car cannot predict how a pedestrian under the influence of alcohol will respond to a honking horn. A recent fatal incident involving a driverless car and a pedestrian in the USA is a testimony of such serious flaws.

Mathematicians and Scientists have realized such serious limitations of the machines and are busy developing “Causal Models” that may try to mimic human way of thinking, but will they come even close? We must not forget that a machine is after all developed by a human mind. And hence, no matter how advanced they may become, they will remain subservient to human mind.

Having said this, AI powered machines will take over all those jobs which are currently based on passively collected data and their analyses. However, this shouldn’t be viewed as a threat. Indeed, this is an opportunity for humans to rise above the current level of working, and tap into those areas of their minds which have remain dormant all this time.

Therefore, upskilling and reskilling is the only way forward for the human race to sustain and thrive in the future.

I suggest taking following steps to capitalize on this golden opportunity of the AI knocking at our future doors:

• Make friendship with the AI. It is here to help us do our work more efficiently and effectively. Indeed, we should call it “Augmented Intelligence”, instead of “Artificial Intelligence”.

• Learn and use available and evolving AI tools in day-to-day work. Many of them are freely available, at least at present. Make a habit of getting familiar with one tool every week. A word of caution: don’t share your confidential information/document with any online tool.

• Focus on sharpening your soft skills: communication, teamwork, leadership, time management, adaptability, problem-solving, critical thinking, work ethic, creativity and emotional intelligence.

• Make your life simple. Declutter all those aspects that create confusion and irritation in the mind.

• Spend some time with the nature and practice meditation. This will help you rooted in the reality, lest you get lost in the virtual world.

• Search for the real purpose of your life and what makes you deeply happy. Direct your energy towards such goals.

• Remember: you are a unique creation of the nature with unlimited capacity to think and create.

Anger Management

 

Anger is a by-product of desire. When a desire for something or someone is obstructed, anger arises against the obstruction. The obstruction can be a person, situation or a thing.

The ideal condition is to not have any desire at all. No desire, no potential for any anger. However, it is not practical to live in the world with ‘zero’ desire. We can reduce the number of our desires and improve their qualities through discipline and practice, but eliminating them altogether is a Himalayan task assigned to an ascetic or a monk.

So, we have to live with some desires to fulfil our needs and manage its by-product ‘anger’.

Anger is the channel of wasting our vital energy. It is a common knowledge that we can’t solve a problem or achieve desired result through anger. Worse, it creates further problems. And yet, we fall prey to the anger wasting our precious energy, which we could use for other creative tasks. It is like having a powerful car which we can’t drive properly. We are bound to make accidents instead of using it for a safe journey.

There is a very small gap between anger arising and expressing itself in our behavior. Often this gap can’t be noticed. However, with acute alertness it is possible to detect the rise of anger within and allow no action for at least 90 sec. Research has shown that the hormones released by the anger will flush through our body and mind within 90 sec. After this delay, we will be in a much better condition to respond to the undesirable situation in a creative way.

Constant practice of this method in every small undesirable situation, while reflecting on the merit of our desire and its fulfilment, will strengthen us to tackle larger undesirable situations and avoid wasting vital energy through anger.