Even though I did not have the privilege of attending the after match IPL parties, the last two weeks were very hectic and sapped a lot of energy out of me. Not being a party animal, I had to scrap to complete my submissions on time week before last. Over the last seven days, I slept intermittently, studying out of fear more than anything else for the practicals and orals. The best part about studying in fear is that there is no external form of distraction so to speak of. The only distraction comes from within – if your train of thought takes makes you dwell on things you would normally not give much heed to.

While studying for my first viva, I came across two approaches of building a data warehouse. The bottom up approach where you create individual data marts (small warehouses) and then integrate these individual modules to make the actual warehouse. And the top down approach which entails one to build the whole thing in entirety and then divide it into components. One minor difference that the book mentioned was that the bottom up method had a higher proof of concept while the top down method had very little proof of concept. It hence suggested that one take the bottom up appraoch as the proof of concept would be there for all to see. Innocuous as it may sound, this point of difference became my plaything (muse for the artistically inclined) over the next couple of weeks.

Proof of concept is pretty much self-explanatory. To put it in simple terms, if what you ideate, think or follow translates into visible, tangible results then you got a high proof of concept. To explain with an example, a salaried job has very high proof of concept (we’ll call it PoC here on) as there is amount credited to your account at the end of each month. On the other hand, if you are an entrepreneur, there is minimal PoC. It is difficult to explain to people what you are doing, why you are doing it and what is coming of it.

When faced with a difficult choice to make, often we tend to choose the one which has the higer PoC. A lot of decisions we take are influenced by the PoC value attached to it.Is a higher PoC necessarily a bad thing ? It depends on what you are looking for.

Lets start with the engineering examination scene. I envy those lucky bastards who study in autonomous colleges. Because autonomy brings with it tremendous PoC. Examination results are declared almost instantly and the timespan for realization of your efforts gets reduced drastically. Very high PoC. On the contrary, we have very low PoC at the Univ of Mumbai. Examination results are not declared for two months after the exams leaving a lot of students shrouded in worry. A classmate of mine was nearly in tears when she messed up her practical exam in one subject. Because of this low PoC, she would not know if she’d clear the same for the next three months. She admitted that she would worry herself to death over this and would not be able to concentrate on her written exams. At such times you really do need a very high PoC.

Gambling and intra-day trading also have a high PoC. Within a span of minutes, you realize your money. And that is what attracts a lot of people to the equity markets and casinos. Because it’s human to take the path having a higher PoC.

Boy-girl romances provide an amazing insight into the PoC story. We have come to a stage where a simple “I love you. I will always be there for you unless ofcourse I don’t fall for some prettier female while coming to meet you” does not suffice. Abstract nouns have a very low PoC. Kindness, niceness, empathy, trust are often relegated as they fail to pull their weight  on the PoC scale (*very thrilled with the pun*). Something on the lines of “You are Vishwanathan Anand. You are not controversial enough to be India’s leading sportsman”. You need to shower praise in public, throw hugs, pecks on the cheeks, click lewd pictures – perhaps distribute them, make out – in rickshaws, movie theatres and behind closed doors to prove your concept of love. Everthing that is done thereafter is to ensure a higher proof of concept. It reminds me of  a Monica Bellucci movie I watched a few years ago – Combien tu m’aimes which when roughly translated means – Show me how much you love me.

Gautam Chaturvedi once very passionately mentioned that the only thing he really loved to do was to frame a quiz. And that his parents could never understand in the true sense why he quizzed, why he loved quizzing more than his Power Generators and Transformers. He then went on to explain that every six months – marksheets quantified his progress in his academics whereas quizzing had really low PoC. I’m pretty sure he’d use a quizzing funda to ace some interview in a couple of years and then it will all be worth it.

All good things have a really low PoC. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, suggests that in order to be good at something, you need to devote 10,000 hours of your life to it. Geez, perfection does have a very low PoC doesn’t it ? Imagine waiting 10,000 hours for perfection to happen. And it might not happen at the end of it for all you know. Say you decide that you want to be more humble or more sensible or more compassionate from now on. Would you give in after three months ? Because there is no metric to measure if you have “grown” over the period. There is no tangible yardstick. Very low PoC. All the really invaluable qualities in life have a really low PoC. The whole idea is not to get intimidated and soldier along. Because when you take up a task with a very low PoC and when it reaches fruition, you’ll be the most content person on the face of this planet.