General Interest Archives - Page 6 of 57

Gaurav Mishra is giving away everything he owns

Wow.

It took me over an year to “give up” my job. Around August 2006, I started thinking that I should quit my job and take some time off. It took until August 2007 to crystallize the vague thoughts that I had in my mind. And it took until December 2007 to actually quit.

As you can see from the timelines, it is not easy to break free of the structure of the default life that we impose upon ourselves, based on what we see around us. Note that, in my case, it wasn’t finance that was holding me back. It was just needing to convince myself to get out of my comfort zone.

Now, six months later, I am convinced that it was a great decision. In fact, I think everyone should do something like this at some time during their career. Especially if your career is having a mid-life crisis. If you’ve been at a regular job for 5 to 10 years, and you can afford (financially) to take about 6 months (or more) off, I highly recommend that you do this. All the non-financial reasons that you are trotting out for not doing so are just rationalizations. Convince me otherwise, I’m ready to debate you 🙂

But frankly, what I did was not all that revolutionary. Lots of people quit their jobs to try something different. Gaurav Mishra is taking the next, really revolutionary step:

I have already decided to give away the job (for ten months at least), and my lovely house goes with it. Now, I am giving away everything else I have, to one lucky person. Yes, you read it right, I’m giving away everything I have, to one lucky person.

He clearly lays out some compelling reasons for why this make sense. Read the details, and comments of readers over at his blog.

For the record, no, I do not feel envious of Gaurav, I have no intentions of giving away my belongings. But I do admire the courage.

J.K. Rowling on the power of failure

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeHarry Potter creator J.K. Rowling talked about what failure taught her at a recent commencement address she gave in Harvard:

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.

So, how many of you are working on an area that you succeeded in easily, but is not necessarily your primary passion? Co-incidentally, I had a similar discussion with a bunch of friends yesterday – i.e. those who did well in college and found well paying and mildly challenging jobs have the least motivation to do something truly interesting with their lives. It is the ones who did not do well who are now doing well.

Ever since I quit my job (six months ago) and started “goofing off” (i.e. working on a bunch of things that I feel passionately about), I’ve met more and more people who wish they could be doing the same, but are still unable to take the leap of faith required. I’ve also met more and more people who did take the leap of faith and are doing quite well. I’m fairly convinced that a lot of people in the first category should just bite the bullet and make an attempt at grabbing their dreams. Financial insecurity is often cited as a reason for not doing so, but I am not convinced. I think it is more of a comfort zone thing.

Think about it.

Wayward Alzheimer’s patients foiled by fake bus stop

Image by M@rg via FlickrDo you sometimes forget what you were just going to do? Alzheimer’s patients are like this all the time. They have decent long term memory but their short term memory is pretty bad. This does lead to many problems for the people who are taking care of them.

The Telegraph has this bittersweet article about a Alzheimer’s nursing home which had to come up with a creative way to prevent the patients from trying to take a bus home:

the centre was forced to rely on police to retrieve patients who wanted to return to their homes and families but had forgotten that in many cases neither existed any longer.

When asked to suggest a solution to this problem, I’m sure most people will think of compound walls and locked gates. They have come up with a much sweeter solution. Just outside the home, they created a fake bus stop. It looks like a regular bus stop with all the appropriate signs. With the small difference that no bus actually comes there.

“It sounds funny,” said Old Lions Chairman Franz-Josef Goebel, “but it helps. Our members are 84 years-old on average. Their short-term memory hardly works at all, but the long-term memory is still active. They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home.” The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.

“We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later today and invite them in to the home for a coffee,” said Mr Neureither. “Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave.” The idea has proved so successful that it has now been adopted by several other homes across Germany.

See full article (found here)

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