A wise guy once told me that if you do 10 good deeds and then 1 bad deed, people will remember the bad one. I knew he exaggerated but there surely is some semblance of truth in the statement.
Making the simple assumption that the statement is absolutely true how does one go about making a decision about doing a good or a bad deed. I roughly tried to calculate the probability that a deed at random which i do is good. Nowhere near 10/11. And considering our original statement, that i have to do atleast 11 good ones out of every 12 ones so that people may not as much remember the bad one, i was in a tight spot. Now i know why it is so easy for one to do wrong.
Let us take example of a typical workplace. Person A and B work under the same manager. Both are given 11 tasks in a period of time. A does 8 satisfactorily and 3 he screws. B does 10 satisfactorily and screws 1. Our theory (and the experience of the wise guy) says that the manager will remember the screwed tasks for both A and B and hence provide similar rating to both.
Of course one can't go around screwing every task but one can surely device a method by which he/she can optimize the excellent/screwed task ratio which results in maximum personal gain as well as professional gain. The model can be further strengthened by throwing in a few other parameters like the point in time of the task (hint: recency effect), task visibility (irrespective of its impact) etc.
Am i missing something or was i late in recognizing it? Let me test it and i will post the results.
Jul 16, 2009
Apr 4, 2009
Apr 3, 2009
Jan 22, 2009
Whew! Mini marathon completed
Today was surely a red letter day in my life. I participated in a mini-mini marathon (3.5 km :)). But i felt really really good when i completed it. And not just completed, i was the ninth person to complete it among some 200 odd who participated. Though i didn't note the time, i must have completed it in 17-18 mins (the winner finished it in 15 mins). That is a bloody impressive speed of around 12km/hr. One year back i couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams that i could do this. But now that i have done it, it feels great and my next goal is to run 5k within 25 mins. Means lots of running left in 2009. Hmm. Good luck to me.
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