2025 Manifesto
Date: 31 — December — 2024
Time: 8:50 PM
In the upcoming year 2025, I wish to improve four key facets of my life significantly. Having entered the second decade of my existence, the time left for developing my prefrontal cortex is rather limited [1].
Before that eventuality, however, I would like to mold some positive habits into the fiber of my being and cut out the negative ones which hold me down.
The key facets:
Thinking
Networking
Programming
Writing
Thinking
Sadly for the last couple of months, I haven’t really been giving proper attention to food for thought. What I have become, regrettably, is a passive consumer, contrary to an active producer. The media and information that I have been consuming have just entered my mind to find an empty, bottomless pit of darkness. And they have fallen into it and disappeared to oblivion.
These past few months, I haven’t once gotten the urge to create, to think more deeply about stuff and come up with my own ideas. I have become intellectually dormant. The greatest instruments that humans hold is not physical, but intangible: the power of our mind and imagination.
I was made painfully aware of this lacking on my side when I read The Dream of Reason by Anthony Gottleib. In a phenomenal first chapter, he attempts to trace out the origins of philosophy, starting with the Milesians. I was struck by the individuals discussed: Thales of Miletus, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and the Hippocratic Doctors.
These singular individuals sought to understand the grand and expansive world around them, to make sense of reality. Though it can be argued that their explanations of the world and natural phenomena makes little to no sense in the modern world, upon pondering the time they were present in, it is a great achievement. They sought to understand and explain the world through observation, reasoning and evidence. They were the true forefathers of philosophy.
This gave me an intellectual nudge and push to make me start thinking. What would have happened if they too, had been just passive observers, philosophy wouldn’t have existed at all. What a frightening scenario to think about.
To be clear, thinking in this context includes thinking deeply about stuff, drawing conclusions, generating ideas about the stuff I consume. One major component that I would like to cultivate in this domain is the skill of Problem Solving.
This is a pretty widely applicable skill, not least in the computer science domain, that I would like to improve on. This also supplements the art of programming, which I would also like to strengthen. I have realised that it is more important to think like a programmer rather than thinking like someone who knows programming languages, data structures, etc.
I would like to familiarize myself with Polya’s steps in How to Solve It. My father has been pushing pretty hard for me to adopt the same from my fifth standard (around eleven years old), and I would like to finally heed it.
Another book that I want to read and practice is Daniel Dennet’s Intuition Pumps and Other Thinking Tools. To read, familiarize and use the mind tools is to automatically improve the clarity of thought.
Networking
It is not a secret that I am introverted. At some point in the recent years and months, especially with the foreboding nature of interviews and internships looming over my head, I have realized that it is not one to wear as a badge. It is indeed a curse.
My father said recently that people who know how to market themselves and people who are good speakers easily ascend the ladder of life. And this fact is evident of many of the incidences that I hear about and see in life.
To network, to speak and engage more freely is far away from my comfort zone shell. Still, I have to try. If ever I hope to crack an interview, make a compelling portfolio, showcase and use my innate skills somewhere worth it, I must know how to get there in the first place. The probability of reaching such a place as a decorated lone wolf is pretty small.
Au contraire, the probability of being a part of a network in which opportunities and information is passed around like ripples in a pond, given that you are in the suitable position to receive and make use of said opportunities, is rather large.
Talking to people is the first step that I must take, and keep in contact with them. Approaching an acquaintance only in times of need is rather rude and is not guaranteed to bring success.
So here’s to me building a network which helps me to get to the place I want to be.
Programming
Having been introduced to Python when I was twelve, to C when I was fourteen or fifteen, I took my ability to come up with the logic and write programs at a moment’s notice for granted.
The harsh reality is that, for the past few years, even though most of my curriculum consists of concepts relating to programming, I haven’t been actively programming. I haven’t been indulging and practicing the art of problem solving for a long time. This ties in with the already established fact that I haven’t been thinking actively for a long time.
Though I understand syntax, data structures and OOPs like the back of my hand, I have really missed programming itself. Being too focused on the syntax, the grammar and data structures, and writing programs for marks, it seems I have lost sight of the big picture, the grand scale of things.
With a newly established threat of AI taking away my job in the near future, my programming space has been pretty dark and despondent.
Thinking deeply about it (putting the plan into action already here), I realise that this ‘AI taking away our jobs’ fear is rooted in my own lack of thinking and problem solving skills. A person who just knows the syntax of various programming languages, along with just a smidgen of data structure and OOP concepts can be easily replaced. These concepts are baked into the internet and the very fibre of the machine. As a result, it is able to spit out programs which satisfy the basic needs of the question.
A person who knows how to think, solve problems and design mistake-proof solutions, on the other hand, cannot be replaced easily. In order to do so, people have to accurately model the human brain, neuron for neuron, to even stimulate the simplest of thoughts.
I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
This also ties with the previous facet: thinking. In retrospect, that applies to all other facets on the list. Improving it automatically supplements the others.
On that note, let’s move on to the facet I believe is most important: Writing.
Writing
At one point in my life, I thought I couldn’t live without writing. I positively considered becoming a full-fledged writer, or, at the least, writing as a supplementary job alongside my usual job.
I regret confronting the fact that for the past couple of months I haven’t been writing at all. The bottomless pit present in my brain just absorbs stuff constantly, never putting anything out. Everything that I see, read and consume is not put to good use. Unlike a black hole which conserves information, my mind just disposes stuff I don’t think about. Things not noted down, those which are gone, are gone forever.
This is the ultimate bitter truth. Numerous times have I thought and felt sad about the fact that the last piece of writing I have published is from seven months ago. To tell the truth, I haven’t written much since then either. The only proper piece of writing that I have committed to the page I wrote during Deepavali, in a singular outburst of inspiration and flow. But sadly I decided not to publish the same, due to it containing many personal details which I do not wish to disclose.
I understood long, long back that writing supplements and adds on to thinking and vice versa. To properly think about stuff, one must write their thoughts out. The contrary is also true: to write stuff, one must have clarity of thought.
In this way, thinking ⇔ writing ⇔ problem-solving ⇔ programming.
Also, addendum: writing ⇔ clarity of thought ⇔ good speaking skills ⇔ good communication ⇔ good networking.
Thinking, writing and problem-solving all serve good communication. This is one moral that I have learned in the process of writing this piece. There we go: epiphanies due to writing. A step forward. Congrats.
One sub-facet that I have not discussed yet is Reading. Reading and writing are two faces of the same coin. One always informs the other, as a rule. The quality of the stuff you read, informs the quality of the stuff you write. And the quality of your writing informs the quality of your thoughts.
Here’s to reading and writing more.
Writing in this context doesn’t only mean fiction, but also non-fiction, including blogs, reviews, critiques, research and written explanations of concepts which I find interesting.
To quote my father: Newton wouldn’t be Newton if he had kept all the knowledge to himself. Barathiyar wouldn’t be Barathiyar the Maha-Kavi if he had not put out stuff.
Just understanding and consuming stuff helps and serves no one.
Conclusion
And so here it is: the manifesto I wish to follow in 2025. I wish that by the end of the year, even if I have not excelled in all the listed domains, I have at least improved significantly in each of them.
I am reminded of a quote I heard somewhere: Progress, not perfection is the goal. To improve and perfect all these facets is a tremendous goal I have set for myself, but I hope to achieve it, and in doing so, improve my daily life.
I also would like to think and practice philosophy more in my daily life. This is thanks in large part to my father, who’s habits and reading have (fortunately) turned me on to the philosophy route.
To quote Scott Hershovitz’s son Rex in Nasty, Brutish and Short: ‘Philosophy is the art of thinking.’
In improving my thinking skills, I hope to also improve my philosophical side. I hope to become an intellectual, reading, thinking and writing of the likes of Grant Sanderson, AC Grayling.
Of course, this feat of becoming and emulating like the great icons in their respective fields isn’t as easy as name-dropping them. I just included them in my manifesto because they were the ones who immediately popped into my head and the ones who have impacted me the most.
I can take some solace right now in the fact that I have already come out of hibernation and my dormant nature by writing and putting together this manifesto. As Aristotle said: ‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.’
Here’s to repeatedly do, to practice often, what I have set out to do.
Happy New Year 2025.
[1] Though I understand this is rather just a myth, I would like a self-imposed ultimatum that forces me to improve myself. And, as a general rule, habits fully integrated by age twenty-five are much more difficult to break.