inside Ninja's Brain

Most people are unaware of the common problem of the human mind or the brain for that matter. If you look at a simple statistics, there is less than .0001 % people on the planet who does not suffer from a psychological or neurological condition. With this statistic, I can say quite confidently that none of you (who’s reading this blog) in amongst that minority. Why I am writing this blog??? Well, I just wanted to take a couple of the most commonly found ‘issues’ (or gifts as i would put them) and prove, why they become an important part of you once you accept it!!! This has huge relevance while hiring or internally transferring the employees who work in your office. One could call it psychological placement!!! So here goes.

One of the most common forms of disorder found is the OCD, which most of you would know as the obsessive compulsive disorder. The common characteristic of people who are affected with this are their adherence to certain strict schedules and their constant fear of something deviating from this chain. A great example of this for the sitcom fans would be Sheldon from “the big bang theory’. Their ‘disadvantage’ would be their unwillingness to accept change and their multiple cross checking of a completed task repeatedly for discrepancies. A simple introspection by ourselves would be a good way to understand or figure out if there is a OCD guy inside us. A simple but not accurate diagnosis would be to ask yourself or your friend whether you overdo some relatively simple task. Like do you have an urge to wash your hands over and over again or do you feel compelled to check if the door or window is locked a multiple number of times? This compulsion need not be physical in nature, it could also be mental where in which you keep reminding or worrying yourself over and over in reference to something which has happened or which would happen. If you shift the point of view from a critic to a more positive one, you would notice that his particular trend is a wonderful thing to have in the case of a supervisor. If a supervisor or a manager for that matter has symptoms of OCD, he would be psychologically be tortured to see things not completed or to see that things are lagging behind schedule. Irritating as it maybe for the people working under him, the job will get done. To give extra credit to this is his irritation towards imperfection. In most cases it would involve him directly stepping on to the field whereas in others it would be nagging the person responsible for it till that is corrected, either way perfection becomes a part of the parcel. In the same context, it is important that you don’t put an OCD based person in the job of a innovative side or as a researcher (frankly they would not even be in that post unless compelled by an external force). I should probably through in a couple of minute points here like, you should avoid giving coffee or any caffeinated materials to these people coz it might turn out to be bad.

The second most common syndrome is ADD or ADHD which means Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Now as most of the people think, this is not the class of people who crave attention or who always want to be in the spotlight. That is an altogether different story. The reason why I had to specify this is coz, most people when they hear Attention and deficit, they immediately conclude that the guy craves for attention coz he feels he doesn’t get enough of it. Well NOT true. The simple rule of the thumb, is that all diseases are based on first person Not second or third. So its about what he feels, not what others feel. So what is ADD or ADHD? This is a condition in which a person is unable to concentrate or focus his attention of a particular thing for a sustained period of time. Edison is a good example of an ADHD. How do you recognize one of them or see if you too are gifted? One important characteristic is that they get bored really really fast. Secondly, they have a tendency to day dream a lot. Thirdly they do things impulsively and they just can’t stop talking. Another prominent point is that you think about a hundred things in the middle of doing something. In short, the insides of the head of a ADD or ADHDer would be chaos, there would be a 100 things which rapidly switch his focus pane. You could consider it similar to what you would feel if you look inside a hyper-threaded processor. This view, is the biggest advantage he has. See, most ADDs or ADHDs can Multitask very powerfully, by which i mean, beyond what most people are usually able to do. Although the perfection of this would depend a lot on how powerful is focus pane is. So someone which a good focus pane, can do several things like listen to music, read books, eat and talk on the phone at the same time, without breaking a sweat. Moreover this very same capability enables them to have a very unique outlook at everything around them in which they can see possibilities and probabilities which moves around in their head. This information overload confuses most of them, rendering them unable to plan into the future, which causes them to act impulsively. Now, how do we tame the lion? ADD or ADHDs make a brilliant Innovation team and pathetically bad managers. Get a group of ADDers to innovate a product and you would be shocked by the ideas pouring in. Make them a manager, where the job is repetitive, and you would find his performance taking a downward fall exponentially. Giving caffeinated drinks to an ADDer is a blessing in disguise as it would ‘calm’ them down. I would also like to give you tip which i found firsthand (since I suffer from ADHD). If you keep all his senses occupied and then assign him a job, you can see miracles happening. Reason: I think the most when I am driving, with music blaring and food in my mouth!

While most companies hire based on qualification, marks or reference, I rather think and look upon a psychological form of hiring. The human mind and brain is a wonderful thing. Understanding it and playing along with it would work wonders. While most people are unable to even imagine the insides of a gifted person, I being one of them can tell you that it feels really weird. Where in most people think, they feel… where most people learn, they derive… A simple way to put it is, Anyone familiar with Computer Vision Technology would know the issues or difficulty in implementing them. But think about our brain, which recognizes others face without us even trying. Ever noticed that its only when we ‘try’ to think that we have to really think.. if its a natural thing we do like seeing things, understating it, reading, recognizing… we just don’t bother think about it. It looks so easy. Now imagine people for whom innovating or managing is a natural thing. Something they do both in and out of their brains. Wouldn’t you want to have them??

I am not again hiring ‘normal’ people, but when you have natural people why hire the normal???

-Ninja-