Sunday, January 3, 2010

Principles of life!

These are some laws of life that we follow and we dont know that we follow. Here are some interesting principles that you can relate to your every day actvities:

-Murphy’s law
‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong & at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way’
You lie to your friend ‘X’ that you are not well and avoid going for a movie with her. The actual reason being you wanted to go to a beach with your other friend ‘Y’. You carry on with your plan and go to beach with ‘Y’ just to find that since you were not well and couldn’t make it to movie, your friend ‘X’ also altered her plans and came to beach with her other friends. Oh ho, bad time for you and that’s Murphy law for you!

-Parrondo’s paradox
‘A losing strategy that wins’
Sometimes we have a dilemma of whom to choose between your friends ‘A’ and ‘B’ who dislike one another completely. Fortunately, you like them both and don’t want to leave either. If you take side of ‘A’ then you run the risk of losing ‘B’ and vice versa. You lose if you choose ‘A’ and you lose if you choose ‘B’.These are your two losing strategies which nullify the effect of each other to make you win. What do you do then? You try to strike a balance between ‘A’ and ‘B’.

-Parkinson’s law
‘Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion’
This is my favorite because I have witnessed so many instances of this law in my life.
Wardrobe- My almirah was getting packed with clothes and I shifted to a bigger one just to find that this too got packed!
Assignments- Day 1, I decide the chart of how to split the work and complete the work which has to be submitted after 20days. Obviously, the work gets its finishing touch on day 19 or sometimes even on the day of submission! In other words, Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. What to do lol. A simpler and common instance could be that of expenditure which rise to meet income’

-Peter principle
‘In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetency’
This law asserts that people are competent only up to a certain stage beyond which they become incompetent. Initially I didn’t quite much agree to this principle but one of the examples here will make you comprehend better.

-Dilbert principle
‘Leadership is a nature’s way of removing morons from the productive flow’
This principle states that it is good to have not so competent people at the middle management because they will not be clever enough to cheat their counterparts or other employees. In other words such people are promoted in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing. Who knows, the management may also promote such people so that they won’t be able to decipher the amount of lootings that the people at top might do lol.

-Pareto principle
‘80% of the results are produced by 20% of our investment’
The famous 80- 20 rule and one of the well suited examples for this is the exam preparation. Most of the students give their exams by utilizing the most during their study holidays. Study holidays constitute approximately 20% of their semester schedule, preparing in which they are able to deliver 80% of their results.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

No comments :)

Praseela Nair said...

Hey Raji , Good to see your post after a long time..Thanks for enlightening on the different laws that we follow unaware of the same.Murphy and Pareto is all what i know..:( And your example to substantiate the Pareto's law does not happen to all..Maybe u r an exception ..LOL :P Because you are born intelligent :)

butterfly Surya said...

Xlent post.

Thanx a lot for sharing.

Keep writing.

Divya said...

very true raji! :)

Rajalakshmi said...

@All : Thanks a ton for your time and comments. It inspires me to write more :)

Unknown said...

I loved your write up of Jan 3rd. You have got 6000 hits on your blog. Shows how popular you are. I think, if you make a compendium of such principles, you may soon have a very good collection that can be used to suit any occasion.

By the way I am in SSN tomorrow the whole day doing an FDP program on , can you believe it, strategic marketing!

Cheeers
Shekarsan

Unknown said...

Raji,

The blog I posted today is a real case. I have given it as a final term test paper for the students of IIT"s school of management who just completed a 30 hour one credit course of professional development conducted by me.

By the way , they also came up independently with a request for 2 day workshop on interview preparation just like you all did.

regards
shekar