Disclaimer : These are just late night rants mixed with my own perceptions and I don’t know the original design decisions behind WhatsApp text status at all :)

Over a couple of posts I started writing about what I feel are little complex things on a slightly negative note though they have been known to be positive like “Time heals everything” to actually look at the topic from different perception to see if it makes sense. Most of the readers tend to agree over the fact even though the posts where written on a slightly sad note. People generally tend to agree over positive things and to be always happy though I wrote a lot of sad content with little amount of positivity but still got enough agreement that left me little puzzled that I thought its time to debug a little more :)

WhatsApp status and its story

Text status was initially designed to indicate whether the person can be contacted or not indicating their availability and slowly grew up to become a little social network of its own providing a crudely similar experience like Twitter. Text status was the core idea behind the whole experience. It grew up to become a feed later that everyday users used to check back on friends on a regular basis even though no one really noticed the subtle experience. So a simple status indicator became a feed of people emotions because people in your contact list are lot more personal than people on the internet. It proved to be much more interesting to scroll through the contact feed to see how people are doing compared to checking their Facebook posts and tweets. So a simple status became an engaging platform to let the whole contact list to know how was your day. The usage was extremely different but hey who cares its engaging and fun. It also had the usual amount of stalking you get when you don’t have a dp or a status indicating that something is wrong with the you to your contact list.

When WhatsApp removed text status and introduced stories everyone felt extremely agitated. Some people felt that it can be useful to let someone else know if they are not available for a couple of days through the status which doesn’t disappear after 24 hours which was the use case and you don’t need to post a picture saying busy for every 24 hours. There had been varying amounts of anger and dismay among the users because they can’t literally scroll through the entire list to see how people are doing day by day. People felt irritated over the fact that the can’t see how one is feeling which you shouldn’t worry about in the first place unless they explicitly speak to you about it. The engagement was too high and it was so easy to update that users got more involved in using the feature in a way it was not intended. The underlying problem was that it was not Bob’s job to look over how Alice feels for the day and most importantly to spend time thinking about Alice’s sad status when he was not at all the intended one to think about it. The feature got reverted and people felt more normal after they have their feeds back to see how people are feeling again. So its more a case where you know its wrong to be too dependent on knowing about someone else’s state though it didn’t matter but the solution was that you just want to continue to do so and it makes you feel normal.

So what does it have to do with life ? Many a times we try to solve the hard and underlying problems with too much positivity that they never really work out at all in the long run. Its like trying to gold plate your hands when you really know your hand is full of shit. Its really easy to be positive to keep pushing things in the wrong direction thinking that they will get ok without learning from the mistakes only to have the problem blew up in the end. There is also a general aversion to failure and to get a shortcut to the destination when its the journey that makes the destination matter at all.

90m story

People generally avoid sad things in life and that we need to smile always and be happy. But with life there will always be tough problems on a regular basis. The dangerous thing about too much positivity on slightly tough situations is that it easily makes deep things shallow and you never get to learn about the underlying reason for the problem in the first place to solve it better in the future. There is a general taboo that sad things are bad except that they happen from time to time and its a fact of life and it makes you a better person too. The normal reaction will be to go through a wall of Instagram or Facebook quotes that feed you with positive goodies and try to put band-aid and pain killers all over the place when you have a chronic fracture that you need to be aware of. To put it in a better way, no one will be really happy in getting the gold medal in a 10m race, its all about the 90m of pain and experiences that truly enrich the taste of success. The 90m helps you to weave up a better story which is the only reason that you will remember the next 10m because hey who wants to remember a 10m win even if it wins you a gold medal. The 90m is a long term period of patience and hard work that makes things work in a job, research, relationship, etc.

90m for job

Many developers wants to work at a big technology giant like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. But the interviews have been known to grill you for a lot of time on mind melting brain teasers and large scale problems that it takes a lot of time for preparation. Many people cram through the problems provided in a lot of competitive programming websites to get rejected by them. They keep pushing it and it takes multitude of rounds before you can finally punch in the air and feel proud about the offer. Its all those late night preparations and rejections that makes people to continuously try for the companies so that they can rub the shoulder with other smart people in the industry. If it was a 10m race where you are offered a job in a single round you won’t be both confident enough to accept the job or really feel great about the journey because it just took just a day. The same thing could be applied for internships, masters, etc. with respective entrance exams.

90m for research

Please watch : www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiNcEguuFSA

There is a problem called Fermat last theorem which basically says that there is no value of a,b and c that satisfies the equation a^n + b^n = c^n for values of n > 2 . For n = 2 you have the Pythagorean theorem a^2 + b^2 = c ^2 and 3,4 and 5 for a,b and c respectively. But for n > 2 there wasn’t any proof provided that the statement was right or wrong that it was unsolved for more than 3 centuries until a 10 year old was determined to solve it that he completed his PhD and became a professor and then it took him over 7 years where he worked in secrecy to finally solve the riddle. He presented the seminal paper and got knighted before the proof was proved to be a mistake and then he worked again for a year to finally prove it again. The whole success tastes much better after years and years of hard work and confidence when you finally get it. He could have got the proof by luck on an overnight thought or in a short span of time but its the years of labor that makes the fruit really tasty and worthy when you eat it.

90m for relationship

Hey, I don’t have stories here to tell you because well you have a whole lot of movies and content that make it look like a 10m race. Relationships take time and its all about those years and years of trust and care that you really want to remember. Memories become much more vivid and delightful when you look back and talk about them after 5 years on a late night chat that makes you chuckle. Its the essence of a good relationship that you can depend upon. But sometimes in those 80m you might lose the steam and things might go wrong but you never want it to be a 10m race as I said earlier and it might look like a lost cause to have dreaded memories about those 80m and not to have any memories in first place but ironically its one of the key ingredients to a healthy relationship.

Questionnaire

  • So, Should I avoid friends when they cheer me up ?

No, people try to do their best to lighten up the mood and that is the best they can do since the struggle is internal. Just have enough dose of positivity.

  • So, What is the 90m for doing X ?

There is no generic 90m even for a single X . Everyone has their own pace.

  • So, Is it ok to be sad and cry out things ?

Hell yes, you just need to accept things as they are in reality and learn from them instead of sugar coating them. Don’t get boggled by too much of positivity or negativity for a long time. Its the experience that matters!

  • So, Whats your 90m ? This reads like an advice !

Oops, I will reflect on my 90m as life permits in this blog. Feel free to disagree!

  • But life is always about being happy, partying and enjoying 100m !

Write a blog post and I will be happy to read :)

Its OK to fail, cry and learn

Why do we fall, Bruce ? So we can learn to pick ourselves up - Thomas Wayne

But you can’t always win the race there may be many elements out of your control that might make a bad impact in the last 10m and you end up losing due to different factors. Such is life :) If you fail over a period of time then your wish to get it done in 10m starts increasing. On the verge of around 10 rounds of failure you finally win the race out of all odds and the moment is made more great because of the all the remaining 990m of failure that you subconsciously loved in the first place.

Good luck!

tldr : Success is more about failure sadly :) (For the lazy)