In Pursuit of Wisdom

Here is a convenient online audio and text translation of Al-Quran in Bangla - https://banglaquran.netlify.app/ I tried it out from both my mac browsers and iPhone safari to make sure I can clearly listen to the audio and read the text. This is particularly great as you can choose to read and listen to both Arabic and Bangla recitation and translation or just either Arabic or Bangla.

The author of  The World is Flat  Thomas L. Friedman  is another eloquent speaker and an optimist. In this interview he talks about the current COVID-19 situation and how we should prepare for the world once this pandemic is over. Friedman calls for a sustainable strategy  to maximize lives and livelihoods  with a moral/ethical trade-off. Because if you are all focused on lives, mother nature will kill every job; and if all you are focused on jobs, she will kill as many lives as she can. Then he touches on how we are reacting on the COVID-19 situation - Chinese model  - complete lockdown Swedish model  - partial lockdown, natural hard immunity US model  - tired of lockdown, opening up before it's safe He calls for humility, coordination, and strategy dictated by chemistry/biology/physics as that's the only logic mother nature understands. He points out the winners will not be those who are the strongest nor the smartest and nor th...

AHappyJob, an online portal for job-seekers, recently contacted me to ask a few questions around the challenges of leading engineering teams. They published a blog post with my answer about it here – The Challenges of Leading Engineering Teams What do you wish engineers understood the challenges their managers go through? My Answer:  When engineering managers are giving relatively high dev estimate for an apparently small task, they are not moving slow, they are adding time to account for the unexpected. When they are going to meetings after meetings, it’s so that you don’t have to. They can answer some of your questions, but they don’t have all the answers. Also, they crave feedback but rarely get it.

Earlier this week I finished  Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less  by  Greg McKeown . Essentialism is doing only what is important and essential while saying No to all the rest of the things that come to us. This book has made me think if I am doing too much with my limited capability and time. In fact, I am very sure I am doing too much and the book merely pointed out that to me in a crystal clear manner. The idea of essentialism is similar to minimalism, although I think essentialism has a more positive connotation to it. It's fundamental personal discipline and leadership quality. You may have also heard about doing smart work instead of hard work, which is also relevant to this. Greg tells us that the way of essentialists is to  (1) explore and evaluate, (2) eliminate, and (3) execute . With that in mind, I am thinking that I need to optimize my life for the following essential things -  family, health, profession, and knowledge . However, I am won...

I finished  Think and Grow Rich  by Napoleon Hill yesterday. This is arguably one of the most popular personal development books of all time. In this book, Napoleon emphasizes that success comes to those who are success conscious. He lays out 13 principles to get rich which can also be used for any other goal than money. Burning Desire  - Wishing alone won't bring money. fix your mind on the exact amount of money you desire determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money establish a date you want it to achieve create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and putting into action write out the exact amount of money you intend to acquire and what you are willing to give in return for it read our your statement out loud twice daily Faith  - When you truly have faith in a desire and believe that it will come true, it starts manifesting its own physical self. Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Auto-s...