April 2017: a status check

Goals and ambitions for April 2017 and beyond

I’m a sucker for new beginnings. It’s the time when I have my brainstorm face on — furrowed eyebrows, wrinkled forehead, scratching beard (if present), munching on junk food, and making lists. Lists, they’re antithetical for getting the task done. You feel sastisfied at making the list, and never get down to doing it.

So, I’m going for a manifesto of sorts. Things I want to be doing in the next few days/years/crogenic-defrostings/consciousness-downloadings.

1. Create more than you consume.

I’ve gone through adult life being a critic of sorts. The kind of guy who reads a lot of reviews, and has a theoretical construct of the world. I like my ability to analyse, and it’s been really rewarding to see my progress on understanding movies.

One of my indulgences is to read a review of a movie after watching it. Onion AV Club, Roger Ebert, the Guardian. I think it makes me smug, and a little subservient to the reviewer’s likes and dislikes.

But I feel seeing the emotion/phenomena/mise-en-scene encapsulated down to words has the same effect as writing the list down. It feels like low-hanging fruit, ego-stroking, intellectualising navel-gazing. It’s easy to read a highly feted review, agree with it, and feel satisfied. But I feel it doesn’t percolate down to the subconscious.

Whoever knows me knows that I’m a highly strung person at times, seeing reality as an unworthy substitute for the intellectual wonders of the the great movie, theory, book.

Creating on the other hand, opens you up to the critic inside you. And that critic inside me is a well-honed, sharp-tongued bastard. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t know at what point to say, this is a work in progress, wait, the time for criticque will come.

I’ve started realising the value of having tension inside me, and will try to embrace it instead of rescheduling my appointment with it via procrastination.

This means being open to criticism. A consequence of living in places like Rakkar and Hamsah Organic Farm has been I’ve started feeling physically strong for the first time in a very very long time. It’s given me a gangsta rap kinda attitude, like don’t mess with me. So now, I’ve started speaking up when I feel something is wrong. And sometimes, in doing so, I find that I’m the one who has the wrong point. And that makes my mental model of the world so much more real.

2. Do work that shoots for the stars

Our parents work pretty hard to put us through a good education. They tell us follow your heart, do what you want to do etc etc.

I think you can do that by doing bold work. I’ve realised that’s what turns me on. Pleasure, and boldness. I’d say that’s the key to my happiness. And to do this, I’ve decided that I won’t let ethical grey grounds, originality morality, or my fear of being shit get in the way.

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3. Tighten my research belt

Some parts aside, I feel the research work I’ve done in college has been mostly about learning what not to do. I’ve been blaming this on the system, the advisors, the topic, supposed attention-deficity-disorder.

But, fact is, I’m guessing that research is one thing that solidifies the hunches that I have. And there’s like truth-backed hunches. If you follow industry, industry wants a quickly-delivered FinTech Android App UI. But that’s no fun.

I want to create Sherlock Holmes’ Mind Palace, backed by the memory of the internet instead of the human memory. I want to work on making linkages happen.

I want to explore transhumanism, from Russian neuropeptides, to the mysterious salves in ancient chinese medicine like Lion’s Mane Mushroom, to Sensory Deprivation Tanks and Human implants.

4. Copy the masters

When I entered college in India, I used to curse myself for not being part of the 1% that can afford to pay full tuition fee for college in the states.

Over time, I have come to accept that that’s a very ungrateful reality to be living in. And there’s only one substitute for not being the 1% — perseverance and patience, and authenticity.

So now I plan to immerse myself as much as possible into the ideas of the Stanfords and Harvards, and Tufts and Aaltos and MITs.

5. Ground these ideas into India

illing in the form for applying to the Interaction Design M.Des Course at IIT Bombay, I realised that the question, why do you want to be an interaction designer, really fucked me up.

And then, there was a task. Give two examples of Indian Interaction Designs that are either really bad, or really good.

OMG! This was a real mindfuck too. Completely blanked out. By the end though, I liked my answers. HDFC IVR phone banking, very poor, because it’s a petulant child that rushes me when i have to give information, makes me choose complaint when I have an enquiry, treats lack of input as incorrect input, and choose noise over silence wrt waiting for agent.

Cleartrip website, very good, because like an efficient butler, asks the right questions straight, understands my intention and shows me dates with best price, shepherds me with the steps through feedback, and its a 1–2–3-DONE interaction.

Soo much better than my generic examples of Facebook Messenger sounds and Macbook Air three-finger-swipe reveal of open windows.

6. Document more, and make portfolio out of that process

This blog is a case in that point. I lose data, and never really think about my thought process. Then then try to fashion out something fancy from scraps. In design school, everyone talks about documentation. I think it’s finally percolated through.