Author: yamtimsina

Who is a scientist?

One day my elder daughter came from school and asked me.
Who was Thomas Edison?
“A great scientist, an inventor” I said.
She replied, “he never went to school, he was deaf, and how did he invent light bulb?”
I paused for a moment and trying to know what her intention was.
She asked me again very curiously, “you are a doctor, you are a scientist, you spend more time in laboratory than with us, what did you invent?”
I was struggling to give her answer, but she immediately diverted her attention to fashion design that she was bringing up to me for last couple of weeks.
My daughter is just 10 years old, 5th grader.
She was raging to me, “why don’t you send me in fashion design course rather than my usual school?”
She repeated again, “Thomas Edison never went to school but gave light bulb to the world.”
I felt I needed to continue this conversation, so I told her, “you have to finish high school first to start fashion design course.”
“Why?” she questioned.
“Because you need to know basic reading, writing, and mathematics” I told.
“What?” “I already know them” she replied.
“No, you know reading but not how to read fast; you know writing, but not how to write fast; you know addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division but you need to know how to do all of them very fast” I told her.
“These are basics in life and are required before to join fashion design or any course.” I told her.
“Aly, you can excel all of these things during high school after that you are free to fly in your destination.” “I will not only let you fly but also support to achieve your dream.” I told her.
Thanks god. My conversation abruptly ended because her younger sister called her inside.
After this conversation, I paused for a moment.
I recalled a book, I had read a while back, a must-read book by Dr. Jordan Peterson-12 rules for life. Jordan is not only a good author but also a clinical psychologist. One of his 12 rules says, don’t let your child do anything that makes you dislike her.
I have no objection with fashion design or any other profession, the only thing I was more curious was to know how she got influenced with it.
I can definitely tell that committed self-education with self-motivation beats formal education even though it lacks 21st century validation called diploma.
I could not tell my daughter you could become Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin or Wright brothers of fashion design if you quit school. But I needed to teach her not to be on trap of passing by shiny objects in life.
My worry was she shouldn’t be a movie played out of direction.
There is another part I didn’t tell my daughter which she needs before joining fashion design. She has to learn how to develop manner and character? And how to be generous, compassionate, and empathetic? I believe these are core principles to instill before to pick any career.

Life is built by scientists, doctors, farmers, builders and engineers. These people will guide and influence our life in many different ways. These people are more than they are.
We have a tendency to follow a media person, a celebrity, or a sportsperson who have produced very little value to evolve the society.

Many of us have our own taste of life. We admire a celebrity and follow in social media even if the celebrity is a drug addict. Celebrities, media persons divorce each other, they alienate their children. It becomes breaking news in the national television, and we follow that news.
Value based recognition which is actually very important for the younger generations to teach is depleting. It is very sad.
We are not teaching kids about our standards of value-base community. They need to learn what is valuable and what is pleasurable. Who brings more value to the society, a scientist or a celebrity?
Most of the pioneering scientists have decided to sacrifice the present to the future. They don’t express dissatisfaction about it. They don’t say take the easier path.
They don’t take anything but are happy. They get stuck in the laboratory and remain unknown and unloved. Many scientists do the same with a hope that one day one result will transcend the generations.

Doing science is a choice of value creation and comes with its own standards and limitations. Science is not an expedient reciprocal arrangement and scientists are morally obliged to produce something that makes the world a better place in the long run.
Science is also a unique mix of thinking and risk. But if experiment doesn’t work, scientist has to transfer thinking power to next generation to create better ideas that make people far stronger and healthier.
Scientist’s mind is a battle ground for thinking with aim to cure schizophrenia, cancer, and diabetes.
It’s essential to follow and surround ourself with these minds than with media person and celebrities. It is.
It requires a lot of strength, courage, and pain to follow the footsteps of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla so that we will take supersonic jet with vertical takeoff and landing to go to Mars.

We always face the world with many shiny bombardments and distractions. We have to teach our kids how to see valuable things. Kids cannot see value if we don’t teach how to focus. And they cannot focus if we don’t teach them which is valuable and which is pleasurable.
With love, teaching and guidance, any kid can be resilient to achieve dream career beyond imagination.
-Yam Timsina

Do you have any dream project?

My dad and I designed a cattle house when I was nine years old. My dad made a backdoor on it because he believed front door creates more distractions to cattle. Back-door gives more air and ease to cattle. He also said back-door protects from wind, rain and predators.
According to him, backdoor is a subconscious mind which works all the time 24/7 and this is the way to initiate unimaginable dream project. The lesson I got is big dream comes from back door, subconscious mind and makes a continuous presence through a connection with the front door of our living house, a conscious mind.

If we are like ordinary people, we don’t often think about dream, unless we have one. Very few people pay attention to dreams. Dreams give rays on the epic and crazy zone of life which are most of the time beyond imagination.
Could you believe immortality of humankind?
What about direct downloading of some apps in brain so that we can run marathon?
Some people on earth live with these kinds of dreams. Without them, we wouldn’t progress and prosper, the hunger for more will die.
Ultimately, we wouldn’t flourish.
Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison are trying to stop the death. How does their brain work?
What is the source of their plentiful flow of serotonin?
Can we become immortal or reduce our age?
People might think they are crazy but for some people this is a normal way of living.
Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, Larry Page and others are devoted so much for anti-aging research. Peter already registered himself to be cryonically preserved, such that the dead body is kept to low-temperature preservation after death with the hope that he might be successfully revived by future medical technology.
Dreams don’t come from ocean and sky but come from spontaneous discussion, reading history books, and association with great minds. Powerful mind brings stable and reliable habit of thinking and spending time alone, which is key to make complex thinking to simple.
When we acknowledge any weakness or limitation on anything, many of us think that we are accepting it. But for powerful mind, accepting any weakness means one step closer to overcome it.
Usually our mind doesn’t see opportunities right next to us because we are so bogged down on our limitations.
Dreams are not the prerequisites of action, but tools of not accepting the weaknesses and limitations.
We still remember many ridiculed stories about Donald Trump when he decided his candidacy to be the next president of the United States. He committed to this dream despite zero experience of any kind of public office. But still, he beat everybody to secure the most powerful public office on the planet.
How did it happen?
Mediocre mind says we need to have experiences related to it to succeed.
The great mind says, if we dream subconsciously, there are ways to make it possible.
Donald Trump is a very big dreamer, a very good inspiration for those who especially look for experiences to achieve something.
We are species of perception and intuition. Many times, what we see doesn’t work but what we think works and leads to revolutionary success.
When we dream something constantly, may be a big plan or project, our mind works constructively to make it a reality through a backdoor.
Just imagine, when we watch a very sad movie, why do we cry?
We know that we are watching a movie and it is fake but still we cry. Our crying is not fake, it is real. The reason we cry because our mind doesn’t differentiate between real and imaginary.
Donald Trump’s presidency is exact example of it. He visualized the presidency every single day and turned the imaginary into reality.
After winning the election the success depends on everyday work for which he has to find people who are experts in the areas. No one learns or has time to learn everything in life from scratch.
Nobody can possibly be an expert at everything.
Donald Trump and Peter Thiel know what they don’t know. They bring expert around them to succeed their dreams.
Dreams solidify the power of vision and direction, which transform unconquerable obstacles to conquerable outcomes.
Dreamers make a change into an opportunity for generations to come.
The best way to predict the change is to have a unique dream, create it by doing something everyday.
-Yam Timsina

How many real friends do you have: five or fifty?

We all think we have real friends, but do we really feel real friends? This is the question I tried to answer. After doing research on my own friends I also asked myself, what type of friend I am myself?
Putting myself in the zone of friendship, I asked myself how many times I actually offer help and support to others?
And how often do I get support and help from others?
If we answer these questions sincerely, we will spot the difference between real friends and fake friends.

A friend is a person with a set of shared values and goals. His or her activities, morale, and functions affect us in all parts of life especially family, health and relationships. If one of these aspects of life is corroded, then our life crumbles because they are interconnected.
The ultimate goal of friendship is to create an inner support that help us to remember our common goal and accountability. In friendship, common objectives come first before the mindset.
Our network of friendship also reflects our net worth in the long run.

How transparent are we in the real friendship? It is a key ingredient. It doesn’t mean we have to open each other’s secrets, but a higher level of mutual consideration for each other’s thinking and a clear understanding of responsibilities are required.

The hardest truth is, people are superficial, they don’t have time to go in depth because we all have things to do.
We expect quick return and have a tendency to judge everybody by cover. We post only happy and beautiful moments in Facebook. Nobody posts suffering, pain, depression, and sleepless nights.
Nobody actually cares about our plans until we produce values. A lot of people around us still don’t care about our process to produce values but raise questions and use our process as a ladder to promote their agendas.
They bring more similar failure stories in front rather than success stories, if we are about to execute some plans.
These are some of the spots to find fake friendship.

If we are surrounded by real friends, they care more about time, devotion, and process rather than results. They clap hands on our successes.
We have to believe that nobody and nothing is perfect that we all grow wings over time by excellent relationships. Through the pool of these few best friends we start to make impact and produce values to the society.
When our influence increases, then amazing things happen that everybody start to follow us on social media even though we don’t know them personally. This is a rule of nature.

There is a great saying that we are the average of six people whom we spend the most time with. The quality of the life we get will depend largely on the quality of six friends that we make.
A very good friend invites debate rather than to avoid it. That deep conversation is not to prove someone is right or wrong but to open mind for logic and evidence. A good friend never backbites in your absence. That is a symbol of nurtured relationship.

If we choose the right friends with right values and remain attached with them, we will create a beautiful life song, consisting of each friend as a good vocal, lyrics and composition.

Focus on six quality friends than fifty fake friends. We actually need a very few real friends who return our call at 2 am in the morning when we need them rather than have hundred fake friends who don’t return our call in the time of need.
Seek friend who is better than you in maintaining and nurturing friendship.
If we distinguish real friend from fake, that creates a path for a long relationship, though it needs time, commitment, and generosity.
Real friendship is pristine but fake friendship is contagious.
If your friend says you deserve more, and you also respond you deserve more, this is how we grow and nurture a lasting real friendship.
There is no price tag for a valued friendship, it is above money.
-Yam Timsina

Are you a tourist or a traveler?

People are celebrating Father’s Day in my native country and I remember my dad who is 85 years old now. I am dedicating this piece of writing on him. Thank you so much for this life Dad. I love you.

When I was in middle school, my dad used to take me to his birthplace Solma, Terhathum where his mom, my grandma used to live. I remember, it was approximately one day’s travel by bus, but my dad used to take me using different route so that it would take us almost two days to reach my grandma’s house. My dad used to take the route that was little bit unexplored and uncommon. He always used to take me in different places than the previous visit for eating, lodging, and other recreational activities. He always thought and lived with the concept that traveling makes each of us more evolving which is life’s greatest accomplishment.

He taught early in my life that we get this life once so why not to live epic?

What is the point of living a life in a cage?

There is a huge difference between a tourist and a traveler. Tourist is a product designed by somebody to monetize us. As a tourist, we don’t explore the unknown, we always walk in our comfort zone with tons of instructions. Most of the time we repeat same food, same place, and same people. But a traveler is a different format, a pure form, ready to experiment the life to venture out for the unknown. My dad was a pure traveler, not a tourist.

He used to share different foods, cultures, and society that makes an amazing memory before we die. These memories are assets to inspire the next generations. Glorious life comes with full of zeal when we encounter new newness in any regard. The experience of having a meal in Johannesburg gives a new layer of understanding and memory than the usual everyday food in hometown Chicago. He tells me: the more unusual place we visit, the more interesting thing we discover. We can’t appreciate things which we can’t see.

When we travel the world, our values and goals will change, we will start to learn the value of empathy in comparison to the value of material possessions. This might be one of the reasons why Bill Gates and Warren Buffett engages so much in philanthropy. Most importantly, we realize the value of experience a lot less than cooperation, humility, and connectedness.

The secret part of being a traveler is that it destresses us from mundane rat race and help us to see the blind spots in our hamster wheel lifestyle. If we don’t travel and interact, we always feel proud at something that we already know better. This is definitely a trap zone so that we learn less and always make poor decisions. We can’t differentiate between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure, a tourism product, can be bought from a very comfort Chicago home, but happiness, a travel product, is internal. Spending couple of hours with people in Asia and Africa who make a dollar in a day gives a lot of sense of purpose of living a life. Happiest and fulfilled people travel a lot and find their own nature and match their life to it.

The person who travels and interact with others more always feel proud to see things through others’ eyes and have clear understanding of opposite perspective.

In the end, I would like to pass my dad’s motto and end this piece of writing: Embrace the challenge, travel more and deal with new people and new circumstances. The beauty of life lies on the other spectrum of the world which we are constantly avoiding.
-Yam Timsina

Why did Jack Ma fail to secure KFC job?

When I am at home my elder daughter Alyssa always asks me to go for swimming. At the pool she pushes me to jump into water, always, every single time. The only reason my daughter wants me to go swimming is to make me comfortable in water especially in deep water. I tried swimming couple of times, but I failed miserably. I was sinking all the time, not floating on the water. And, at the same time my daughter was going like fish in water. I failed completely in my practice many times, but I became better and better gradually. I felt it, I was improving little bit at a time.
In the beginning, I didn’t realize how big psychological impact that my daughter has put in my mind because I was struggling to breathe while swimming.
Now I go swimming multiple times in a week. Not only that I am good at it, but I never realized that I could swim this well in sixteen feet deep swimming pool. After evaluating my success in swimming, I asked myself.
Is it essential to fail before to succeed in anything?
Jack ma had thirty different job rejections including KFC where twenty-three were accepted except him.
I have read the story of Milton Hershey who failed in three candy companies before he got a Hershey company.
Another person that comes in my mind is the most renowned and respected television personality Oprah Winfrey. She was fired from broadcast journalist saying that she is not appropriate for the television industry.
Stephen King failed multiple times before he became renowned author.
Walt Disney failed to secure the funding multiple times before he pioneered Disney World. Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton both had signs of Asperger’s as a young child (a disorder on the autism) but nothing stopped them from becoming the most brilliant scientists in history.
From these stories, the learning lesson I gathered is how to change, adapt and grow to defeat failures. If we want to overcome our failure and learn from it, we have to leverage the strength of the person next to us when we go up and down. The prime factor is family and people we associate as my daughter Alyssa showed me the ray of courage that I could be a good swimmer.
When I was kid, i failed multiple times in different sectors, and it didn’t affect me deeply to follow my dreams. But when I started to become little older; my rent, mortgage and responsibilities suppressed me, and I postponed my dreams for someday. In reality, that someday never came. After certain years, my inner desire and enthusiasm about my dreams became so thinner and thinner until it completely disappeared. Exactly the same thing happened in my singing dream. I used to sing songs in my high school and as an undergrad. Dream of becoming an aspiring singer vanished.
If I would have started that dream, I wouldn’t regret it now. The worst-case scenario I would get failure from that dream project. To be honest, regret is permanent, but failure is temporary. We just don’t spend our time searching successes, we have to spend time looking at ways to keep studying to the failures we already have.
Success and failure both are measurable in life. There are three components to measure success: health, wealth and progress. The importance of these three we realize only in later stages of life, after passing the actual time. And we start living the life of regret. If we are feeling healthy in each passing day, then it is a first sign of success. If we are feeling wealthy in each passing day, then it is a second sign of success. Wealth is different than rich. Rich is accumulation of money, but wealth is accumulation of positive mindset to create quality life for ourself as well as for the society. The third sign of success is to grow, each passing day by learning something new.
If we don’t fail, we don’t invest on us, therefore failure is inevitable because it teaches us to invest on us. I invested one hour each day for ninety days in my swimming to become ordinary swimmer.
Investment on us is far more powerful than investment on product or service.
Majority of failed people don’t differentiate between a job and a career. They do the job throughout their life, but they hate it every day.
They don’t do anything about it. If we really hate the job, then we should escape it as soon as possible.
A job is a simple way to pay our bills and obligations, but a career is a deeper system to move into quality life by creating value.
Failure forces us to seek competency and mutual relationship among the coworkers in the work field. Rare and valuable skills are result of deep focus, deliberate study and practice. These are tools for building any skills like swimming for me by ruthlessly devoting myself beyond my comfort zone.
The more I try to force to study failure, the more I learn how to succeed. The only requirement is patience.
By origin, human needs each other’s back to succeed, mostly not to repeat the same failure.
Alyssa, my daughter, needs me in her science experiment, and I need her for my swimming tips.
-Yam Timsina

Where do you spend more: education or healthcare?

How healthy are you?
Are you really living with your full potential, or you are just pretending to be healthy? By giving answer to this question, we clearly express our strength and limitation in life. Remember, the struggle behind the discovery of one normal drug for a disease still costs one billion dollar and 10 years of time.
Similarly, how educated are you?
I am not talking about Ivy League’s diploma and certificate. I am talking about the understanding of life. How well do you keep yourself aware about your profession, your health and new innovation in society? Education is not only knowing; it is understanding of the world and adding a new layer on top of your understanding to facilitate your life.
If our education system forces our kids to memorize the capital cities of Asia and Africa, then it doesn’t take long to be sidelined in today’s technologically sophisticated society. Education is to create value to other people to improve their lives; not to memorize capital cities unless to participate in quiz competition.

Clearly, education and healthcare business would be the fastest growing businesses. If we are not careful then majority of our money will go in these two sectors in coming days. Education and healthcare require more urgency and importance than we actually realize. Both areas heavily involve teaching, training and instructing people around us.

How well do we persuade, or influence others is the key in these areas? Probably far more important than technical knowledge or skills. Teachers and doctors both should convince others, both should care and support others.
One skill is far more important than ever for both teachers and doctors.
How to open both ears and close a single mouth. By opening mouth, nobody learns.
Listen more from your students, patients and family members. I have had experiences of doctor interrupting me as a patient in the first round of talk where I was detailing the cause of my visit.
Few years ago, I was teaching chemistry to sophomores. I was telling students to write about the topic I assigned. Almost ninety nine percent obeyed my topic, but two students did not. They choose their topic but not mine. During grading what I realized is the student who wrote his own topic exceled far well then those who wrote my assigned topic. To improve the understanding, only key is making the student centerpiece. The power of choice enhances the optimism, which is required in today’s education especially in digital age.

Another effective tool to get student’s inherent drive is teach to ask questions. Mostly ask uncommon and open-ended questions which force anybody to think. The skill of asking better questions is way productive and useful than finding the correct answers. This is in direct conflict with current teaching and learning technique. Most of us learned from our school, college and parent how to answer but not how to question. Questing is still considered unethical in many circumstances. This is equally important for doctors too. Encourage and teach students and patients how to ask questions especially open-ended questions which avoids yes or no answers.
My cousin was not studying even before the day of chemistry test. Rather than to ask direct command question like “study for chemistry test tomorrow”, I asked her some indirect questions.
“How much do you score in chemistry test tomorrow?”
She told me, “4 out of 10.”
I again said, “Why you are not picking 2?”
She said, “I deserve better than 2.”
This will amplify my cousin’s personal positive intrinsic motivation for study.
Imagine the consequences if doctors apply this strategy to their chronic patients.
Now a days, a sophomore student with internet excess can have more information on the mechanism of Diels-Alder reaction with 3D simulation model than his or her 1980’s PhD professor.
Doctors are really busy people; they have to see assigned number of patients in a day. Don’t instruct the patient what to do and not to do. Listen their details, habits, behaviors, and patterns then act accordingly. Now a day’s patients arrive in clinic and hospital after doing intense research and reading about their disease and problem. In conclusion, teaching and treating patient are same old concepts but we have to deal in a new way or a new approach. I would like to reinforce the idea that there are no new teachings or treatments, only new approaches to execute old and existing ideas. Teach every kid like you are teaching your own kid and treat every patient like you are treating your own dad. How does it feel?
-Yam Timsina

How do you use simulation in everyday life?

My daughter Aryanna was studying the physics principle regarding the change of state from rest to flying. She was working on the complex mathematical derivations.
Once she said, “I gave up becoming an aeronautical engineer.”
I said, Why?
“It’s too complicated and I’m not absorbing the information”, she replied annoyingly.
I told her, “Do you know what simulation is?”
She said, “it’s a computer program to make a model.”
“What about you become a model of aeronautical engineer, be yourself in this position at the moment. Think of your life in this position. Make emotional connection to it and pretend you’ve achieved it. How does it feel? Would you feel undefeatable? What would your mom say? What would your friends say? What would be the taste of that life?” I told her.
She sat down on the floor and closed her both eyes and started to visualize it.
At the present moment she was aeronautical engineer.

In reality, the term simulation is very complex. It generally represents approximate imitation of the activity or process. Its application is diverse depending on situations like technology, computer and natural phenomenon. The most critical aspect is its use when the real does not exist and the valid source of information is not available.
The less explorable part is it is an unstoppable source of inspiration when the road of life becomes tough.

I am a practitioner of science and technology. I have experienced that when we say or do some new activity, we seek scientific evidence to support. The common question we ask: is there scientific evidence for that or this? Simulation is that power which bring us momentum to try out something new. It teaches us to be the evidence ourselves. So, the next generation will use us as a scientific evidence.
At its core simulation does not indicate future. After realization of the moment, it brings joy in our mind. We become more attached to the activity. We enjoy the activity or process and produce the result.

If the present task doesn’t produce any result, or if it is cumbersome then drop it for a moment, close your eyes and simulate the work, process, as well as final outcome.

Present activity happens in pure consciousness. When we simulate the circumstance, we make connection to the point from where consciousness starts. Simulation is feeling that will bring you closer to the truth of who you really are. And who you really want to be? Complete attention through simulation brings full acceptance of the present reality. This is a catalyst to act.

Aryanna opened her eyes and said, “Dad, I let my future clarify the present, I was creating time and space for my present task. I was honoring the present moment by allowing simulation to come by.” “I also found total equality between my present state of trying and perfect aeronautical engineer. There is a flow of life which I am experiencing now. Until I achieve the desire goal, I continue to practice simulation.”
“There is no doubt that I am going to be a very successful aeronautical engineer.”
-Yam Timsina

What is the science behind story-telling?

My niece is a sixteen years old girl and one day she asked me a very difficult question.
What do you recommend me to study in college?
I paused for a moment and said, “This is a very complicated and difficult question to answer.”
She said, “I am so confused from the suggestions of my friends and family members, so I need your help to make the decision.”
“I have read about some prominent successful figures across the globe and found that their study and work align to their core values in life, and a lot of time they go against society, family or friends.” She added.
She expressed very powerful statement that we experience ourselves in everyday life. It’s true that very few people’s opinions matter in our life. Rest is just noise and interferes with real life signal all the time.
She continuously added, “I not only want to be successful in future but also want to be authentic.”
Silence. A confused smile of desperation.
As I was observing her expression especially with her question, I was fascinated experiencing her assessment to measure success in her life.
I didn’t say anything to her that particular day.
Next morning, I asked her, “What do you read more, fiction or non-fiction books?”
She said, “I do read more fiction books.”
And I added, “Why do you read more fiction books?”
She said, “Stories are touching, and they bind me closely while reading.” “Sometimes, I feel like I should fake the story until I really make it.”
I said, “That’s wonderful.”
“Now, you have the answer of your question that you had asked me before.”
“Life is the understanding of few things rather than knowing many things. Understand the disciplines or subjects, by which you can make many stories throughout your existence.”
“These are your real-life stories, and should bind your listeners and audiences like what you experience when you read fiction books,” I added.
“If you are able to do that in your life, you will be successful and authentic. Remember, if nobody interests your life story, then you should seriously rethink what you wish to do with your life.”
“You would be more valuable person in life, if you make a very large pool of people paying very close attention to hear your stories. While you are telling your story, but if listeners mind wanders, then you aren’t successful. Bind and captivate them and create the flow of inspiration. Plain, unemotional stories do not influence the sub-conscious mind. Sub-conscious mind works twenty-four hours.”
Remember, if a middle school science teacher starts class about moon as, “Once upon a time there was a child in the moon……..” All the students will remain calm, relaxed, and quiet to take all the information about moon. This is powerful and would be therapeutic especially in learning. Miscellaneous information about moon gives miscellaneous results.
Study whatever and wherever you want, but get your story ready as you continue your legacy.
There is another worth remembering part in the story telling.
“Do you know? When is the best time to tell your story?”
If there are many other story tellers in the room, “Tell your story in the end, if possible.”
Try to absorb the information as much you can from all other story tellers, and you tell your story in the end.
I learned this technique from the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, who was wrongfully imprisoned for twenty-seven years but evolved as one of the best story tellers of the world to influence billions of people on the planet. He learned this skill of storytelling from his dad early in his childhood. Sometimes, despite spending months and years working in our own story, there is zero progress. But by using one simple idea of somebody else’s story line could spark the whole new series of results.
Listening another person’s story before our own story is a skill and doesn’t come overnight but we can build it slowly. This skill is hard to learn but will pay off forever.

-Yam Timsina

How does the science of extinction begin?

Albert Einstein said, try not to become a person of success, but a person of value. Our value starts with how many lives we have touched or impacted. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both impacted billions of people so that we say them billionaires. If iPhone and computer systems code is changed, our complete office and business system including even our non-web related affairs need to be reshuffled to adapt that code change.

There are two ways of getting success and create value, either we alter the circumstances, or we alter ourselves to adapt the change. It does not matter where we came from yesterday or who we are today. Success is the constant battle of adaptation for what we do tomorrow. I am a firm believer that the only way to succeed tomorrow is to create value for tomorrow, and it lies in our ability to adapt. Success comes when opportunity and adaptation meet.

I asked Durga, “Could you come to cheerlead 5K Run participants next Sunday?”
She replied, “Don’t you think I’m so busy”.
I said, “I know”.
We all are busy, but sometimes we’re busy for being busy.
I’m not judging Durga, I’m just reporting.
She is twenty-seven-year-old two hundred thirty-pound lady in my office.
She visits McDonald’s fastfood pretty regularly via drive through because she doesn’t have time to cook at home. But she never visits in fastlane gym to workout. She is getting out of shape because she isn’t congruent with eating and workout. She says obesity runs in her family.
I respect her genuine excuse of non-action.

More than one-third of Americans are obese costing billions of dollars in medical expenses. Very few of us do minimum aerobic activities because we are not adapted to regular exercises. Not doing it creates stress and slows down the production of new brain cells. It also brings reduction in serotonin and dopamine making us poor memory person.

Tomorrow’s work stations should adapt free massages and free yoga class for their employees, if we want high performance and productivity. Workspace should not be cubicled, but open, and pets should be allowed so that everyone could feel like home. Very few people are aware of the relationship between productivity and pets. This is the future of office culture so that everybody enjoys going there. This new practice will make normal office hours obsolete.

Most of us know that meditation significantly lowers stress and anxiety, and elevates attention and creativity. Ray Dalio’s company, Bridgewater Associates, offers free meditation service to its employees. This is another example why we need to adapt new tool in office culture. This exotic vision and willpower come from sheer leadership to adapt new tomorrow. This not only brings sustainability and profit to the organization but also maintains work life healthy balance to employee.

In today’s world, specialized skill in any area is required, but it has both good and bad ramifications. The good aspect is we become expert in the area with keen understanding and knowledge, but the bad part is, there is also high possibility of becoming a trivial market value that has high chance to become obsolete. For example, the specialized expert in automobile industry never thought about the robotics when they were in peak of their career. Now their job is gone. The person who can envision the future spends time to study the forthcoming. The specialized automobile engineering skill could be diverted to the robotic skill. This is called adaptation to change.

My dad used typewriter and also used to repair it when I was kid, but now our typewriter is once upon a time story.
Specialized skills in stock brokerage now, is not far from extinction due to Robinhood and Vanguard.
Priceline dot com already engulfed my friends travel agency office located in King’s way.

Uber and Lyft have now transformed the travel industry, they own nothing except one app, but that single app has put thousands of taxi drivers’ career in jeopardy. Today, dependence on one skill specialization has high risk of obsolescence. When we become experienced in one skill set, our activities revolve around repetition over and over again every day. Daily job becomes monotonous rat race. Our mind goes to autopilot and acquiring new knowledge with hours of learning commitment becomes a distant goal.

The real personal growth in life comes from everyday new life experiences, not from everyday job. New uncomfortable conversation with someone whom you never talk before gives competitive advantage. Single visiting card of a medical science liaison officer who was next to you in your Dubai flight last month can open plethora of avenues. New thoughts, ideas, and experiences don’t come from regular job but from seemingly unrelated dots we experience in five hundred miles away in Florida beach. Growth happens outside of our comfort zone if we are open to adapt it.

Success in career, business, and life is built with time. Time is asset only if we are able to convert one skill set to another with required adjustment and modification. Otherwise, time becomes liability for us. The more we work with people environment, the more we learn about ourselves. This is the key to develop new ways of thinking, new skills, and new ways of serving for tomorrow. Obsession in one area of skill without open mindset to change hurts. And it hurts another skill set. Insanely good at one skill may also take us to obsolescence, if we don’t listen to others.

If we are resistant in adapting to change, we may go out of business. Many of us know that, in 1952, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa both conquered the peak of Mount Everest and also returned safely on the ground. But very few of us know that George Mallory had also reached the peak of the Mount Everest before Edmund and Tenzing, in 1924, but died while returning. It’s not the strong that survives the best, but the one who adapts the quickest.

Many of us have a vivid memory of renting DVDs from Blockbuster Video, an iconic original VHS and DVD rental industry. But now, Blockbuster became the history. At one time, Netflix wanted to sell its company to blockbuster. Blockbuster ignored to adapt to change assuming that live-streaming Netflix is transient. The result is with us, failing to adapt to change is extinction.

Finally, I am coming to conclusion with one alarming note of our current teaching system inside the class room, it is still a teacher centric unidirectional. Holding iPhone and sitting inside the class means we have unlimited accessibility of information. I am curious how long do we attend boring and tedious history and English literature lectures from one-person knowledge bank, the instructor? These teaching practices are endangered to be extinct in coming years. Adaptation to online information tool with advanced curriculum is indispensable now, even in elementary schools. Those who absorb the changes and assimilate to take advantages of it will remain forever. If anybody is not willing to adapt to change, extinction is the inevitable outcome.

-Yam Timsina

Why do we need smart tattoos and slingshot machines?

Only one who commits wholeheartedly to a cause with whole strength and soul can create a true technology. Therefore, new technology demands all from a person. New technology and devices are becoming everyday tools to enrich our existence. These attractive devices are a reflection of creativity, products of focus, and tools to add value in the society. Our brain craves novelty, therefore, many technologies are growing and impacting our lives exponentially. We wouldn’t discover new things if existing things captivated and attracted us for longer periods. Only completely new devices or technology activate our brain and increase our level of dopamine.

Faster and safer technologies are today’s need to cope with ever-growing population. The question is why we need exponential growth of technology? There is a very clear answer by Peter Diamandis in book “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think.” If we look back at the history, it took 123 years to double 1 billion population to around 2 billion. But it took only 33 years to add another one billion, and surprisingly only 14 years to add 4th billion. Today, in the middle of 2019, we have around 7.8 billion people on the planet and it is projected that it would be around 10 billion by 2050. Can we sustain this growth considering our resources in perspective?

Thinking innovation is only half of the game and it is pretty much old schooling because its usefulness is the new school of technology. One way to see this challenge is how can we maximize human’s superpower brain for more useful technologies. There is a huge difference between unique innovation and useful innovation. We definitely need more of useful innovation to prosper. And, more importantly, how to connect this brain to more useful technology so that unseen resources and potentials could be target. Our brain can conceive and believe anything. It is actually two million years old and is so vital that it is the source of keen specialized knowledge economy. The key question is are we ready to invest in superhuman brain who specialize unthinkable and unimaginable.

As Stephen Covey said, the best way to predict our future is to create it. We have to make our planet livable. UN’s climate study panel has concluded that the world has to remove at least 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere this century and Harvard climate scientist David Keith is developing direct air capture technique (carbon dioxide catcher) to pull carbon dioxide off the atmosphere. Needless to say, Ray Kurzweil from Google gave us Siri in our iPhone, and Craig Venter, a human genome pioneer, gave us artificial life. Breakthrough in technology happens when great minds change impossible to possible.

Very soon, mobile phone would be outdated, and we will be moving to wearables and implantables as seen in Hollywood movies. Smart monitoring treats diseases in real time and we can use cyber-implants that are directly connected to smartphone apps. Smart tattoos bring microparticles that can be infused under the skin like tattoo and track body’s chemistry. Cyber-pills work with microprocessors which directly communicate with doctors from inside your body. The expansion of this kind of technology will become normal in near future.

Slingshot machine is a small refrigerator that vaporizes dirty water and provides safe and clean drinking water. Its inventor Dean Kamen, an engineer, inventor, and businessman explained that this machine needs no overhaul or maintenance for five years of operation and uses less than a kilowatt of power to generate 1000 liters of pure water per day. This power is lower than the power consumption of a microwave oven. Thousand liters water is enough for 100 people for hygiene and cooking.

Furthermore, vertical farming is another technology where we can grow plants vertically, and also grow meat without killing animals. It is the practice of producing food and medicine in vertically stacked layers, vertically inclined surfaces and integrated in other structures like skyscraper and shipping container. In-vitro cloning of muscle tissue in computerized factories brings lower costs and high nutritional values. There is no environmental impact because there is no insecticides and pollution.

We have to nurture these technological explosions as tools to cope the growing population on the planet. If the population explosion continues like this, we need deliberate great minds to try something new that has never been done before to direct against existing saturation. Any new jump into the unknown is called reckless science but that’s where the human progress lies.

-Yam Timsina