Power of the Compound Effect
good afternoon everyone thanks for the
intro
the year was 2003 when my parents gifted
me the first personal computer
the 13 year old in me was happy
was so happy it was a prized possession
it was an
asset which i had always desired for
and with the personal computer at all it
unlocked a few weird things in me as
well
i got access to a lot of things notably
this tool called photoshop i’m sure
you’ve heard of it
i would use that and remove the
background of our digital photos
add text clipart and then i would build
them on a4 sheets
and make greeting cards out of them
i would also proudly present all those
masterpieces
as gifts to my friends and relatives
i still remember the day it was really
good
i was so obsessed with my computer i
loved my computer so much
and i didn’t even realize that by making
it
that by making those greeting cards i
had actually made my tv steps
into design a skill over which i would
literally build my career
but back then i didn’t have an iota or
doubt
as to what i would have to do in the
future as a career
the day according to iit madras i was
the happiest again
the happiest any teenager from an
indian middle class family
life seemed so sorted it felt that the
future was bright
well why not i was in one of the most
premier colleges of india
and i deserve to have that feeling
indeed it is a temple of learning and
everything and every person
inside the campus would instill you to
do something new
each and every time
so i also got into the business of
learning
from second order differential equations
to climb in the water tank
in the middle of without letting anyone
know
i learned them all so
i had an awesome life in the campus
and then one fine day i learned
something else as well
i learned or rather i realized
that engineering is not the thing that i
wish to do all my life
i liked it but i couldn’t see myself
doing it all my life to the extent that
i would love each and every element of
it
even in its worst forms that wasn’t the
case
it was a time which actually made me
feel worried
my future which seemed bright and
certain suddenly started seeming
with a lot of uncertainties
i spoke to it and i told them that this
is how i feel about what i have been
doing
at that day my parents told me something
really important which had a lasting
impression on me
and i think that even
they said do not stop learning
beat your academics or be something else
that you like
just do not stop learning and things
will be fine
you’re at a good place you’re smart
something good will happen to you
this support from my family from my
folks
instilled insane amount of confidence
and i started the place of learning
once again this time it was little
different this time it was all about
unconstrained learning because i had not
to prove anything
there was nothing that i had in mind
that i would achieve it just whatever i
see inspired me
i would love one great person had once
said
that if you choose or if you choose
something
with only a same mind you will never end
up making
the right choices i think i took it away
too seriously
i started doing a lot of things
i started speaking to the mirror when i
was a little one
i would speak to myself and see how i
looked when i speak
how my face changed how my accent was
eric
one day i remember i spent hours trying
to perfect the pronunciation of the word
water in the most british possible
although i knew that i had it the next
morning i just did it because it made me
feel happy
in one instance i spent one whole night
reading through the reports of one of
the very famous
double murder cases which was all over
the news back in its time
why did i did that just like because it
made me feel happy
because i learned something i was proud
that i’m the person who knows about that
case
more than anybody else in this campus at
least
this went on for a long time but
academics were there as well so yes all
the stuff that i did
it did affect my grades a bit but not to
the extent that i couldn’t recover
it was all good since i had nothing to
worry about there was no tension in my
mind
i was just doing whatever my heart
but design always remained the way it
was
it was restricted to designing posters
and t-shirts for the college festivals
and so on i never considered it as a
career material
because it never felt desirable that
something you can
oh my god until now
when something happened in the industry
and it made me
look things in a different way
the startup industry started booming i’m
talking about 2014 2015.
and with that came the need of
that came the need of this new never
heard of
very cool and desirable profession
called ux design
i went ahead and started reading about
it i that most of the job descriptions
seemed like it’s a technical role it had
all the things an engine like me
would need to have to believe it at the
top it needed analytical thinking
it needed critical problem solving it
needed me to understand
code and so on and so forth
but along with that it had a few things
as well which is not
much heard in the technical industry
it asked for sympathy empathy
emotions aesthetics and design
that kind of opened my eyes and led me
into thinking
all those things which i have done in my
life which could also be regarded as
procrastination
is it actually required for some kind of
job which is actually going to pay me
money
seemed interesting i’ve read further
into it
and then i realized that’s exactly what
it is
as an engineer and as the things that i
have learned in my college
i already had the technical bits of the
things which was required for the job
or for that career and along with that
the greeting cards and the stuff that i
did in photoshop
also improved a few other aspects of it
and come on we are all humans we have
our emotions and sympathies
and i’m a very socially active person i
love to meet new people
so all these things together it seemed
like it would be a wonderful proposition
for someone like me
to be in the profession
and that’s exactly when i thought maybe
i should venture into the speed
and see what it has got in me
so that’s how i eventually started a
career
in design without having any formal
education
it is this compounding effect which
compounded the things which i
had inherently in me along with the
things which i acquired over a period of
time meet in my college or read in my
leisure
and it create a position which was so
unique that it
made me stack from the rest of the lot
i really understood the power of
bounding exactly
long later you know when i started
working
and things were in place i was quitting
jobs designing stuff
and life seemed good there was a time
when i started speaking
in public something like this
when i delivered my first talk in a
professional audience of course
that day i realized the value that i had
generated
by doing all the fun talk that i did at
random invader
i wasn’t as scared as someone else
speaking for the first time repeat
because i already walked past that
what started off like a fun activity
which i would do every night
my friends might even think that
probably he has lost his mind
that has actually created tremendous
amount of value for me the compounding
effect
worked once again and it compounded the
speaking skills which i accidentally
acquired
with the design skills which i had
anyways acquired by compounding my
engineering and my social skills
and created another new proposition of
ux speaking which itself is a career
these days by the way
so these days once in a while
when i look back and i pondered
how that likely switched
from the core engineering career to
related to design how would my life be
it feels like my life probably wouldn’t
be very different i would probably still
do really well
in that but maybe i wouldn’t be as happy
as i am today
when i present my work to my clients and
my stakeholders
i do it with the same amount of energy
and enthusiasm
the way i did when i was a kid i
presented those
masterpieces of those greetings to my
friends and relatives
it makes me so happy and for an
individual like me i’m very sure
a career which was only about
engineering could have
never given me that thanks