Monday, July 10, 2006

A.Q.

Homo-sapiens have a bad habit of adaptability attached with a hint of inertia. Human beings are very adaptive. They adapt to things and atmosphere very soon. Adaptation here is not necessarily what biologists define though. I mean, a person can add another layer over him/her to adapt to the new environment. Say Eskimos wear a huge fur coat to get protection from cold. They don’t actually grow hair like a bear for protection from cold. That is the physically tangible adaptation; one tangent in the discussion of adaptability. But we are not talking about that.
Man is an animal who has the power of choosing the response to any stimuli whether it is any external or internal mental turmoil. This has led to many things in tandem,

Power and Insecurity
Society and Obligations
Technology and Obesity


to name a few. The last one even though might seem funny is very true. Okay coming back to the adaptability part… Now I am talking about the human being’s mental adaptability quotient and the inertia associated with that. Well, why did I call it a quotient, here is the reason…

Inertia) Adaptability (Quotient
……. (Some factors)
-----------------
Prejudices/Compromises


This is how I think the mind handles the adaptability in a new environment or new idea, since we are considering the mental adaptability also.

A person is born in some atmosphere; he/she gets used to that and really adapts himself physically and mentally. Now the adaptability I am talking is the one when he/she moves out of that place which they are already adapted.
Let me give you an example to just show you what I am talking about.

Imagine a corporate training room; computers all around, geeks using them. Geeks are an interesting cult. They are masters of some technology and can talk hours about the same. Now imagine these people attending this training on a technology absolutely unknown to them. Something very new, which they had to learn as the business in which they are needed them to. After all, the bottom line is business!!! Okay let’s not get into that.
The instructor, another geek of course explains some concept, and then as the conventional education system demands; shoots a question at the geeks sitting in her class. One pretty young lady from the crowd gets up and tries to explain the concept. In the process she gives a beautiful analogy between this concept and a similar concept in the technology she is good at!!! The explanation is mind blowing. Everyone who is familiar with that technology is overwhelmed by the answer. You hear mild sounds of Bravo… Bravo… Etiquettes of course stop them from banging the desks!!!


Even though the lady understood the concept that was being explained, she did that only with reference to the existing knowledge that she had. Now do I wish to say that she is wrong? Well, well we are not here to make any judgments. We are just trying to make some sense of things that we see around us. It is important thing that one needs to look at in that example. A person once, he/she gets acquainted with something finds it hard to remove it from his mind when he/she is seeing something similar. A correlation is made with the existing thing in the mind and new “something”. That is a gift of nature bestowed upon us. This gift itself is what I name the INERTIA which defines the ADAPTIBILITY QUOTIENT. This gift can many times prove to be a handicap in learning new things; in adapting to new things.
I cannot make comments on whether it is good or bad in general; but as an individual I think we need to use this gift, this inertia in a good way. When learning something afresh, just concentrate on the new thing in its entirety as an independent thing; as if it has no correlation with anything in your mind. You have the gift to anyway assimilate faster. Now once you are through in understanding the new concept as an independent thing, now try to correlate. I have found the difference in this open way of exploiting the gift of inertia that we have. We can’t take out something out of our mind, but we do posses the power to prioritize. Why not leverage these two beautiful powers viz. The Inertia and The Prioritization; use them in tandem and increase our
A.Q….. Adaptability Quotient!!!!

5 comments:

SiD said...

hm.... guess u r learning some new technologies.. :)
well, let me tell u i can so much co relate to this one.. Here I am also learnign some new things.. and finding it really dificult to break the old mould and adapt to this change... yesterday was a frustrated day.. trying to learn how to install something and not able to get it for whole day... then i was given a task (an late evening urgent reqmt)- in the field i love.. it was done and delievered in an hour ;)

well, will again try to wear that coat of adaptibility and try , try until it is another part of the body!!!

Anonymous said...

I must commend the way you have put things together.
Actually speaking, there is no need for me to write a comment here , the reason is any harder to guess..
I have so far succeeded in stopping myself from starting a blog of my own...though every blog of yours spurs me on to do otherwise...You are a bastard , but you rock !!

Anonymous said...

Adaptation... hmm... i appreciate ur atempt to present a good blend of "adaptation" with "corelation"...

thats what makes our survival in this industry sustainable

afetr all "Changes are the only thing constant in life"

Anonymous said...

hmmm people live peopl die.. and you knwo they also adapt :) guess thats what u r tryin to do :)

Amrut said...

@Sid:
Ya man.. We need to try and try...
@Anil:
Thanks for the comment. I hope you do start your own blog.
@Senthil:
Yo Man.. Change is the only constant!!!!
@Anon:
Yes.. You are right... People do adapt.. But the way you do it is the most important part of this!!!
A dialog from matrix...
"There's is diff between knowing the path and walking the path"...
Thanks for the comment!!!