The Steve, Woz, Sculley dilemma

Hello, lovely people of planet Earth. This is me again, Roy, coming to you direct in a slightly inebriated state. Recently, I have had quite a bit of spare time, and like all human brains, my thoughts too have a tendency to wander around when allowed the luxury of free time. So, I did a bit of that reflection thing and found three characters that kind of sum up my entire dilemma.

It seems like a long time back when we were just a few guys sharing a room, and at times sharing a dream, of putting a dent in this universe. Those were the JEE prep days, and maybe also a bit of Senior Secondary schooling on the side. Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve had just come out and the four of us had one copy between us (those were the heady days of Flipkart), we couldn’t decide who got to read it first and so each of us got to read one chapter at a time, and thus the book went around. The excitement around that book carried on for weeks, every nuance, every character trait of his was a topic for discussion. We chided him for his estrangement of Lisa, and hailed him for his vegan quirkiness, for his obsession with A-players and his fixation with straight traces on the circuit board, mocked him for his ‘reality distortion field’, but soon enough Apple was the most valuable company in the world.

It was only a few years later that I read Woz’s version of it all. To be honest, it was kind of a letdown, nowhere close to the thriller that Isaacson had produced, of course under the direction of the maestro himself. Woz seemed way more focussed on the personal work that he had produced, rather than the story that Apple had written, his pride in his designs overshadowing the larger impact that they had. His dad being an electronics engineer at Lockheed, Woz got a really early start into the world of electrons and the plumbing that made them flow, his dad was a true Engineer at heart and instilled in him a pride for Engineering. Woz got hooked, and soon, was miles ahead of his fellow students, this feeling of being the best, at what he believed was the most important profession in the world(Engineering) kept him yearning for more, he didn’t wanna lose that lead. From those very early days, his designs were not just about getting something done, they were a source of pride for him, they were about doing things in the cleverest way possible, they were the canvas for his craft. This obsession led to tweaks here and there, that others would/could not care about, all these small innovations added up. This obsession with electronics also meant that he was constantly creating new designs and devices, each project added to his intuitive understanding of electronics and became a stepping stone to bigger, more complicated projects. All of this experience with TVs, computers, and calculators came together in Apple I to create a truly revolutionary design for that time, a computer that had a display and a keyboard in place of indicating lights and punch cards, a computer that stored a boot up program in ROM, so you didn’t need an hour of fiddling just to get it up. The bits and pieces had already been there, but no one had the cumulative knowledge to connect those dots.

Steve too was a quiet child and though he was also interested in electronics from an early age, he did not have the kind of exposure that Woz had. Steve’s dad was a mechanic and could only teach him some basic electronics. His childhood was kind of a story of missed potential, he got good grades but was bullied at school, to the point that his parents decided to shift in order to get him into a better school, where Steve got introduced to computers. He fell in love with the concept, but could never dive in the way Woz could, after all, Woz had his very own personal Aquaman, his dad. Later on, he would get introduced to Woz and the two of them would become good friends, goofing around, and then starting Apple Computers.

Now, while Sculley did write a book about his time at Apple, I never got around to reading it. So, we will make do with the prevalent public opinion and maybe interpolate a few observations of our own.

The starting of Apple was a two step process

Woz invents a revolutionary computer interface
Steves takes that idea, puts on a pair of Nikes and runs like hell

If Woz’s story was about pioneering designs, Steve’s story would be about sheer will. While Woz brought Apple into existence with his pioneering design on the Apple I and then the more mature Apple II, it was Steve who kept the ball rolling and ensured that Apple stayed at the forefront of technology, bringing together Engineers who could do it over and over, scouring the globe for technologies that could open up the next frontier, the GUI from Xerox, Capacitive Touch from FingerWorks, Gorilla Glass from Corning, et. al. The important point being that he knew exactly how much to stretch, which products could be made possible with the technology of the day and which ones would trip the company over. He could judge, how much paranoia added to the appeal and when to open up, say putting a USB on the iPod or bringing the Office suite to mac. Steve could take those decisions because he understood the technology, he himself was in awe of what computers could do and was driven to make an impact in the industry. Scully, when given the same mandate, made poor choices, both with product and strategy, this even though he had been a star at Pepsi. Licensing away Software, he diluted away their value proposition, with Newton he chased a product that was not possible in the day. Scully came from a business where his primary job was managing numbers. A technology business is fundamentally different from a bottling business, in a bottling plant the primary concern is to keep the taste constant, tech on the other hand moves really fast, the primary concern being to clamber on and stay at the top of the pile, especially for newer companies. Bureaucrats might be well suited to running cargo ships, but U-boats demand a Barbarian at the helm. Take the recent rise of AMD under Lisa Su(a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering), over Intel under Bob Swan(no Engineering Degrees).

Pick and Choose, Mix and Match –

The Bomb Maker – Woz
The Guerilla Leader – Steve
The Police Officer – Scully

Our subconscious, individual definitions of happiness and the ensuing slavery

In a previous post I put forth some thoughts regarding personal productivity. Well, I had an extremely productive week following that, just one. The past two weeks have been unsatisfying at best, still, there’s this constant exhaustion, a lingering feeling of tiredness. Why is it that a productive week feels less tiring than an unproductive one? Why is it that despite knowing that I am gonna regret the minutes I spend scrolling my Facebook feed or those random YouTube channels with sciency claims, I still let those minutes slip-by. There is an endless list of things enticing us with small dopamine bursts, taking away small but significant chunks of our time, we know it’s a trap, but still, keep falling. This is an attempt to explore the emotional aspects that drive the output of our working lives.

Humans are happiness seekers, our radars constantly point us to our happiness beacons. The problem is, that often our radars can’t see very far. We tend to pick up more on the short-term dopamine potentials and in the rush to collect these small highs, tend to miss out on the larger beacons trying to give direction and purpose to our lives. The signal from these far-away beacons is often faint, making us unsure if that long journey is worth the effort, we perceive risk, we might never make it, that faint signal could be nothing but noise. In contrast, the short-term rewards are right there, they might not be a jackpot but the risk/reward ratio is lucrative. The problem is that these hits don’t last, the next day all of it comes back in full, as guilt. Is this the right way to spend our limited time on Earth? Running after transitory goals, missing out on our contributions to the world.

There was a time, I had no concept of music or poetry. I couldn’t begin to comprehend why men would put in any effort listening to other people’s tales, tales articulating their love or misery (often one followed by the other). Those were the days when moving coil speakers seemed far more interesting than the sound they produced. Today, I very well enjoy music and quite a gamut of it, even the colloquial Bollywood Romance, still can’t stand rap. The definition of happiness expands, shrinks and morphs for each of us as we tumble through our daily lives and this definition holds a lot of sway over us. The people we spend our time with, the things we read, the ideas we are exposed to, the way we spend our leisure time, all of it adds up to our perception of happiness.

Can we put ourselves in a mindset where leisure is pain and work is joy? Tune our radars to block out the distractions, allow us to hear those far away beacons? A mindset where the idea of an unproductive day haunts us so much, it is way sweeter to buckle up and work. If our definition of happiness is affected by the above factors, given the right inputs, surely we could hack into such a state. I know people have, I know I have, for brief periods.

How do we develop a reproducible, repeatable hack? That will require work. Work requires the right mindset. Oh, the hack was supposed to bring the mindset. Chicken, Egg problem here. I die ~~trying~~ lazing away. 😒

The demons conspiring to chain us down – a look at our mental blocks

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We have come up to the third post on this blog, and given my history of abandonment and procrastination, it already is, something.

The last couple of years have been a bit of a mental muddle for me, especially the last one. Initially, it felt like a passing phase but then it stretched. I felt like a fake, trying to hold a facade, I had become afraid of failure, of trying, my eyes constantly lingered on the destination and not the trail. At times I longed for someone with whom I could lay bare these vulnerabilities of mine, someone who wouldn’t stab me with my armour off. All of this unpleasantness forced me to look at myself and troubleshoot what was going wrong. Yes, there were a couple of external factors playing their part but today, I believe all of it distils down to one single point, I was unable to respect myself, no longer proud of being myself.

The stage for this was set in the first two years of my college. I cannot speak for all institutions but the Indian Institute of Technology BHU has this culture where effort is downplayed and the results glorified. Essentially, the higher your perceived result/effort ratio, the bigger your clout. All of this didn’t matter to me initially, as an underdog, just another random face in the crowd. But then time passed and as everyone does, I too started having an impression in my tiny portion of the universe. I started growing a reputation of someone who knew how to get things done, how to build things that worked, also came the reputation of someone who didn’t study his coursework. All good, even enjoyable for a couple of years, but then things changed.

As a natural part of growing up, I moved on to bigger, more complex projects but I had already set myself up for failure. I had developed a fear of failure and far worse, a fear of lowering my perceived result/effort ratio. A larger project brings with it bigger challenges, which need more effort, ingenious and maybe far fetched solutions, but every time a project floundered, instead of doubling my efforts, taking more creative, more risky approaches, I would instead cut losses(risk/effort ratio) and bail off. A couple of consecutive failures take a big hit on your confidence and you begin anticipating failure, spiralling into a self-sustaining vortex.

I picked up a camera in the third year of my college, quite determined to learn photography, Starting with books and blogs, I got reasonably good with object photography since I could practice that in my room, alone with no one else there to judge the results. The problem was that I could not click people, presented with an opportunity to click people, my brain would suddenly find itself dropping down a well of laziness, it would find something more important, urgent. Once in a while, I would win in this battle against my own insecurities, but often I failed. The point to be noted here is that quite often, the thing we most dearly want is also what we are most afraid to go after since we have attached too much value to it. We become afraid of failure, holding off till a hypothetical day when we will be fully prepared to take on the challenge, a day when we would have eliminated every probability of failure. That day never comes.

There is a misguiding force in our heads. It pulls us away from our strongest calling. I have been a victim of this force, still am, probably a lot of us are. Look out for the things you are most reluctant to pursue, hidden underneath would be your deepest desires, run after them ignoring every misleading story that your brain makes up, you would find happiness.

The writer William Faulkner was once asked ‘Do you write on inspiration or on a schedule?’ Faulkner replied. ‘Well, of course I write on inspiration, fortunately it strikes every morning at a quarter past 9.’

GET UP AND GET CRACKING. EVERY TARGET OUT THERE ASKS FOR A PAYMENT IN THE CURRENCY OF EFFORT AND EFFORT ONLY. PAY THE BILL TAKE YOUR GOODS HOME.