The Hindu Business Line : Eliminate the ‘what if’ worry

Five words that can literally change your life forever, according to David A. Shiang, are: “You cannot affect the future.” The only future outcome that can occur is the outcome that will occur, he writes in ‘God Does Not Play Dice’ ( www.landmarkonthenet.com ).

“Few of us will find it easy to accept this notion – most of us want to be in full control of our own destinies. We want to think of ‘endless possibilities’ in a world where we are completely free to do as we please,” Shiang acknowledges. He argues, however, that we have all the free will that we need (which is zero). “We just may not have as much as we want.”

Two other words that play a very important part in how we think about the past and future are ‘what if,’ the author notes. “We think we could have done something we did not do, and we think we could have not done something that we did do.” Although such questions may be of interest, the answers are largely remote and abstract, observes Shiang.

“By one estimate, more than 30 per cent of the time we spend worrying concerns things that have happened and can’t be changed. A simple alteration in the way we think can lead to the virtual elimination of this entire type of worrying.”

Liberating read.

Ethics in numbers

While it is hard to say at what point good manners become ethical behaviour, given the centrality of social norms to both, etiquette without ethics is an empty gesture, form without meaning, bemoans Leigh Hafrey in ‘The Story of Success: Five Steps to Mastering Ethics in Business’ ( www.ravemedia.in ).

He argues that ethics as a subject contributes most to the MBA curriculum precisely in that it adds substance and integrity to the notions of effective communication and effective practice in organisations.

“Once we address ethical behaviour in business and management, communication becomes more than a matter of putting the right spin on a situation, and leadership goes beyond manipulating employees to achieve a desired personal or institutional end, regardless of their best interests,” reasons Hafrey.

The numbers no longer speak for us or for themselves, he avers. “We speak through them, and in doing so introduce an ethical element.”

Forceful plea.

Return on minutes

Every minute counts, so take control of your life, urges Caroline Righton in ‘The Life Audit’ ( www.thelifeaudit.com). “The minutes of each day are your currency, and it is important that you have a clear idea about where you are spending your time in the present,” she exhorts. The quality of your waking hours can often be measured by the company you keep, the author guides, in a section titled ‘relationship stocktake.’ There is nothing more debilitating than a painful relationship that sucks your soul dry and leaves you feeling a lesser person, she warns.

Once you start matching available time with real-life demands in order to achieve the non-guilt-laden, happy balance that is your breakeven position, “you’ll realise how much better it is to compartmentalise your relationships and identity which ones do require and deserve time and attention to prosper and which ones don’t.”

Ready takeaways.
Negative numbers

It was mathematicians in India who put negative numbers on the mathematical map, says Marcus Du Sautoy in ‘Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature’ ( www.harpercollins.com ). “Along with the concept of zero, they saw the potential of introducing new numbers to solve equations such as x+3=1. They called these numbers ‘debts’ because they represented a useful way of denoting money that one person owed another,” he narrates.

Brahmagupta, a seventh-century Indian mathematician, was ‘one of the first to write a treatise on the mathematics of these numbers.’ He was, perhaps, ‘the first to record that if you multiply a negative number by itself you get a number which is positive.’
This ancient math wizard knew its implications for solving quadratic equations. “Brahmagupta realised that more complicated quadratic equations will also have mirror solutions… While the later algebra of al-Khwarizmi was still a book of words, Brahmagupta had started experiment with using the initial letter of various colours to represent unknowns in equations.”
Immensely educative.

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