I get up, ready for a new day! "Dusk", yes dusk, dawns upon me flashing rays of inferiority and insecurity rising from previous life indicating that regardless of where I am, I will always feel far lesser than others and would feel this constant need to prove myself, not to anyone else but me.
Then comes my life of being around phenomenal folks across the globe in a conducive environment that helps reveal a side of yourself, quite unknown, yet exciting. That definitely overdoses the shred of doubt in my abilities but at the same time, pushes me forward to explore new boundaries and thinking beyond the horizon. Yes, I would insist you to don the thinking hat and then tear it apart, for your brain can supersede the circumference of the hat with quite its extraordinary self.
An unforeseen future which is painfully frightening at first but eventually seems like a joyous ride. A peaceful dream turning into reality and reflections of inferior self vanishing with time. Not able to connect the dots you ask? Well, here it is, my life in this talk....prepare to dwell into grief and then rise from the ashes as life is indeed a sine wave of varied emotions and stepping stones...in simple words, a way to know yourself a tad bit better before you depart from this Mother Earth!
I believe there are moments in our life, where we tend to feel, or at-least I felt that I don't belong here, wandering the space and talking to the stars at night like a little boy voyaging in the wonderland trying to find my true identity. Tracing every single time during my childhood, there was a thought that I don't belong here! Don't get me wrong, I love my family but I always envisioned what it would be like to cross the boundaries of your confined space and think beyond the spectrum.
Then comes the moment to cross the confines and find out if other people feel something akin to my thought process or even remotely similar to my train of thoughts running down the memory lane. It is at that moment when you realize the world is bigger than you can imagine.
The next obvious step (I thought), travel to a different country and try to gather such human patterns and what bothers people in day to day lifestyle. What kind of problems irk their regime or increase the entropy of their surroundings and that's what brought me to furthering my inquisitive self into the art of thinking of different problems from an inventive mindset perhaps.
So, the key to thinking of new problems is observing the nature and understanding the heuristics of people near you. You will always find someone cribbing about a problem or cringing in agony, be it hypothetical, exaggerated or simply a trivial issue but always pay heed to those problems. You will find someone missing a bus at a given time, missing their laptop charger while heading to work or sleeping more than their scheduled time leading to an unsettling routine.
Now, let's apply a thinker's additive thought process to solving such problems - think of an app which triggers a notification about the arrival of the bus by continuously gathering the position of the bus - quite simple right?!
Now let's take this a bit further - think about the charger. What if you are living in a smart home, which, I don't think is stretching the figment of your imagination as I'm sure we are already living in that era. Now, since you have cameras, imagine that those cameras can detect or rather, classify every single thing in your room. And now, think about your daily routine and the items you like to carry with you while you're heading out to work. Surely, you would not want to leave your laptop, mobile, perhaps your purse or bag at home. Imagine if the smart home system is able to send an alert to you as soon as you're leaving the premise rushing out to the office or school about your missing charger you left on the table?
Well, one thing is you would not be in a situation where you reach halfway through to your journey or have opened your laptop bag in the office only to realize that you're missing your laptop charger.
Is it too futuristic to be able to classify items in the vicinity and relaying information to a person about his or her items while keeping track of their daily routine? Think again!
Is it too hard to fathom a scenario where an aromatic alarm clock is able to spray pungent odor at sporadic intervals post your sleeping cycle by coordinating with your wearable device to devise the optimal time to trigger its spray? I would not buy it but how about a mobile device simply connected to your Fitbit and trying to find the optimal time to trigger the alarm after identifying if you have taken sufficient sleep or crossed the rem zone.
Coming to my insecure thoughts which drench my body with sweat at times, Is it too tough to fathom a situation wherein when you feel like a failure or have varied emotional states, the TV in your room can play highlights to your favorite episode or a rom-com movie to indulge your thought process and modulate your mood, only to make you happy? Think again!
Is it not possible to imagine a world where we as engineers can think of such problems from an inventive mindset? The world is made up of endless observations and discoveries, its only a matter of time till someone realizes the magnitude of such problems and takes the leap of faith to take on such problems as a challenge, striving to solving them bit by bit!