Notifications free

I joined the smart phone bandwagon pretty late. So-oh late that by the time I was on whatsapp everyone in my life, was already tired/bored of it and was seeking out ways to replace it with something else. But I guess that's the ruse they used on me to finally get me on board. Like everyone else. Hooked to my phone and the pings and the notifications. As with every new toy a kid gets I was obsessed with my smart phone. Learning the tricks. Playing candy crush incessantly. Driving everyone around crazy by begging for a life. Virtual life. As with all millennial trends I quickly reached a milestone where I could not live without looking at my phone every few seconds. Well, I exaggerate. Every other minute is more like it.

Around 2014 year end, my phone stopped working for some reason I dont remember. When it finally started, I had to reset all the apps. Which gave me a chance to reconfigure notifications settings for all apps. I have always been a proponent of silent notifications, so I never had to worry about what kind of sounds my phone would create to grab my attention. Still the visual notifications were there. My OCD struck brain could not handle notifications count each app showed, for missed notifications. Also the unseen notifications panel on iPhone lock screen annoyed me to no extent. Getting rid of them one by one per app was testing my patience. So I got rid of them one app at a time. Starting Jan 2015 my phone went notifications free. 
Whatsapp
Facebook/Messenger
Gmail
Twitter
Instagram
Foursquare/Swarm
Skype
Goodreads
Viber
Dictionary
Quizup
Elevate
Foodpanda
Pinterest
All misc apps like drive, uber, ola, yelp etc etc.

These apps were the first on the list.
Then I muted all groups on whatsapp. I also left a few groups eventually (story later).
The only apps where I did want to receive notifications were runkeeper and words with friends (given the frequency and liking for these app activities). So they got full reign over my notifications tab.
A big fear while doing this was I'll miss out on stuff. So the in app notifications remained. For example close friends updated on facebook etc.

So what's the outcome of all this cleansing ?

The frequency of me checking my phone has not reduced much. But I feel a huge relief because I dont feel like constantly checking my phone. I do check it every other hour (see the difference!) but its more for twitter and ig feed refresh and sometimes to clear whatsapp group messages, most of which are forwards which I do not even bother to read (on most occasions! )

6 months later I realize, I have not missed out on anything super important contrary to my fear. I am very much in loop on things happening in my social network. I do have this sense of not being controlled by the urge to check something on phone or keep it charged all the time. I am falling into a pattern to check emails. Like on my phone I check emails only in the morning after I get up and once I am home from work (which is sometimes a lot more than I would like). For the rest of the time, I am always logged into my computer, so does not matter. I have realized most whatsapp/fb/twitter/instagram notifications dont require my attention. But I still respond to them in a timely fashion, which serves another OCD of not having any response/reply debt.

Of course I am not sin free. Texts/iMessages, Calendar and work mail/slack are few notifications enabled apps, I have not yet gotten rid of. I am almost scared to death to miss out on anything (important) related to work. So I am not getting rid of visual notifications for them anytime soon. Also I do check work emails at ungodly hours and reply to them as well. So that is going to need a lot of discipline. I am not sure if I would like to get rid of Calendar alerts. They help. All the time!

In the end I am happy to announce that it does not kill you. Only makes you stranger.

My SMI

Pre script : SMI = social media intervention. Lame as it may sound.


Henceforth, I am going to curb the urge to google/facebook search/linkedin search anyone I meet online, unless of course, I have to engage with them in some kind of work (work-work, creative collaboration, guidance, etc etc).
I am suffering from googling/linked in-ing any random person , remotely interesting. Yes I am trolling them in my own way. And I don't like it.


Because it leaves so less a chance for serendipity! Imagine meeting/chatting with someone and realizing you have so many friends/experiences in common, unconsciously. And horror of horrors imagine 'knowing' all this and then pretending you did not know anything beforehand, when the serendipitous facts come out tumbling by.
And sometimes I dont even want to know about any common stuff in any way. With some people its just the lesser the better.


Enough said.


~nightflier

Linking people or not ?

Disclaimer: To each his own


Since the dawn of gmail in my life, I have come a long way in learning how the world is trying to connect using the internet. People who have been using internet pre-gmail will consider me backward. And I think so too. But I was not exposed to computers and related technologies growing up much, and I have no particular regrets about that. In truth, life was simpler, without the compulsion to be involved in many unnecessary things.


The thing is with deeper penetration of social media in our daily lives, I wonder why people are apprehensive about using it. Today over lunch, a girl said she doesnt want to be on linkedin because your profile shows up on google search and she did not want anyone to know where she worked or what she did.
Of course security/privacy concern wise I understand. And to each his own. Really.


But with my increasing belief in solving problems collaboratively, rather than being stuck on some issue all by yourself, not knowing what to do next, I think networks are cool. If privacy is not your issue. 
Also what I found amusing was the thought that what if my manager/employer found out that I was networking!
Another amusing thing I have heard is if I move on to a new job my ex-colleagues will find out what my new position is. I mean isn't that the purpose, ideally ? To make sure your advancements are visible, so that you can be reached out for any kind of guidance. May be this is too much idealistic talk.
Even stranger is when people are willing to contact a consultant/contractor during their job hunts, but are not so  willing to contact company representatives like HR directly on linkedin. Does it stem out of diverting the system where we are used to do things through agents and contractors? I think direct contact with any HR makes the process more visible and transparent.


What makes me think about this even more is I dont think any of the founders thought about these things while trying to imagine a network of connected people, through their skills, work experience and education. 


I would like to believe that most people are not aware, how one can utilize all this networ(th)k effect to come across as a capable, able prospect for any kind of guidance required in any field.


Having said all this, 2 years back I was a person who did not understand the concept of networking during school job fairs. I struggled to put myself across effectively (it was a cultural thing). Eventually I did learn and I feel the importance of professional networks even more. And hence I champion them.


~nightflier


P.S. Feel compelled to add as an afterthought, that everyone needs to find the comfort zone in such ecosystem. Like the first line of the post.

learning curve

So I am learning another language. No it cannot be spoken. And it deals with computers.Thank you for the boos.


Moving forward. I was wondering whether the fact that our teacher is a total geek has anything to do with my increased levels of interest. Or how he tells stories about the evolution of the language and constant anecdotes about why some things are done better or worse. He promotes doing things on the fly. And nor does he start the session with boring stuff like data structures, data types, classes or objects. 


Flashback to undergrad days, when those very terms were hammered down my throat making it mandatory to learn them (mug them if not understand) to pass exams. I hated computers and anything which taught me how to automate things with their help. 


Coming back to present day, anyone in the technology field will tell you that how even a little knowledge of computer programming languages has been a boon to their existence in this field. And again going back to teaching techniques used to teach these make me gape. In horror. After 4-5 years of collective experience using various languages, this session was the *only* one which really took care of my needs as a learner. And I know a huge credit goes to the trainer, who was more interested in getting us 'grown ups' interested. Rather than forcing us to blindly accept stuff.


Interesting thing he mentioned, 'only our computing platforms have improved, the tools we use remain the same. Which is quite a shame. Even Dennis Ritchie would agree.' Does same apply to teaching ? Why have not our techniques improved ? or have they ?


~nightflier


P.S. may be that's the reason some of my brightest computer engineer friends cringe at the thought of coding. Their teachers did something terribly wrong :D

The why of innovation

Blog post is a result of the post (must read alert!) Upasna wrote which prompted me to write about my experiences!

[A quick note for Upasna: I know I took more than a week to finally post it. But the more I thought over it the more I got material, inside my head. So thanks for making the grey matter churn! :) Have tried to keep it shorter though!]

I am an engineer by education and a student by profession (I know it sounds clichéd but this is my standard answer to aai, who is often intrigued by why I take up obscure things to learn).

My 4 years of undergraduate studies might not have taught me much theoretically/practically, considering how crammed up the system was and how I never got along with some course material. But the one thing, I stress over and over again, it has done is, open my mind. And the decision to study further and some extremely awesome *chance* experiences restored that fact and brought me face to face with research and innovation. Bundled together.

Even though some of the brightest and smartest people I know are pursuing their doctoral degrees, I am not naïve enough to believe that all innovation comes out of a lab where a bunch of thick spectacled scientists are working rigorously on a mathematical equation which will reduce the child death rate in under privileged countries. (of course I believe in magic and applied mathematics being able to solve almost any problem). May be innovation comes out of need. Of a mother whose child refuses to eat any vegetable except potato and then she starts making stuffed parathas with different vegetables. May be sometimes its just epiphany (divine intervention mayhaps?) that a particular task could be achieved if done in a particular way. Or just the need to simplify things (like mr. Jobs did with his intuitive UIs).

And in this regard, I feel compelled to share my recent experiences.

It was a *chance* afternoon session with some university representative from a giant corporation where he pitched the company to dreamy eyed students. At the end of the session, he told something about a technology competition. I was not at all interested in the jobs he discussed, so to prove myself as a winner who took home something from the session, I told 2 of my brightest friends about this competition. They readily jumped in. We submitted our first business plan and prototype video, got selected to national finals. And during the preparation on the project, which aimed at connecting people interested in social welfare across the world, at every point technology proved to be an enabler to solve a real life issue.

And not just that, it was weirdly empowering to see some uber geeks, working on solving problems concerning the common people. Not only that during various product demos (students are the best targets for such advertising!) the geeks around me were thinking, how they could take that piece of hardware and customize it to their research needs. Again stressing – mind opener.

My highest point was explaining school kids, teachers, reps from a senator’s office about how a bunch of mathematical equations could really simplify how people shared resources. (Had James Cameron visited our booth, may be I could have talked about home tree and all, Avatar being a smash hit of that year) So taking an extremely naïve idea out there and making people understand it, felt really satisfying to me. Also interesting to note that, the team that won consisted of 3 medicine students (and an engineer if I am correct) working on a mobile application for detecting vascular diseases like diabetes to help people in rural areas where equipment is still an issue.

So may be innovation comes from a girl’s need to justify time well spent and two geeks’ capacity to think beyond their lab work to solve real life issues. The 'where' doesn't really matter.

My other anecdote is more personal. How twitter has changed my life. I have totally grown tired of main stream journalism. Even newspapers. So when people talk about information overload and what not, twitter has streamlined and filtered that information for me. I feel more aware, more connected, by each day to my surroundings, the world, in a very impersonal way. Plus twitter for the most of the time is full of literary awesomeness, dry wit and humor. #win. #always.

And this innovation they say came out of another behemoth’s lair.

And of course, not all technology suits all. There are some things which I have not yet experienced or may never. But whatever I think may make my life simpler, enjoyable, comfortable will definitely be a part of my life. And as Mr. Jobs says, Upasna agrees and I concur, ‘technology married to liberal arts and humanities makes our heart sing.’

And now may be, most innovations will (still do) come out of intermixing these.

And that's why even I agree that it doesn't matter from where the innovation has come, as long as some process for some end user gets simplified and product experience has been enriched. If the technology touches even a single person's life in a positive way, then that's a definite 'innovation' #win.

~nightflier