Tag: calendar

The Paradox of Colour Choices

Many of us are familiar with the paradox of choice, whether or not we have heard of the phrase itself.

The paradox of choice, is our tendency to believe that more options or variants or choices in a given situation or purchase event is a good thing. After all, who wouldn’t want more flavours in a cereal or jam, or more accessory choices when buying a car or colour options when buying shoes or maybe laptops?

However, I think it was psychologist Barry Schwartz who first argued that for consumers, eliminating choices in fact dramatically reduced their anxiety as opposed to making them more content or delighted. It also simplifies our ability to compare and decide quickly, as opposed to being confused by the complexity of the multiple options presented.

I personally went through a similar experience with my calendar app. I think I installed it sometime in 2013-14. It had a few basic colour options for each entry. And since it was quite basic, I felt the need for some features, and the flexibility of some more colour options, to be able to categorize different priorities or types of reminders by colour. So I signed up for the Pro version.

All of a sudden, I got access to probably three times the colour options which, after an update in the recent months, has now become unlimited colours! There are the basic 11 Google supported colours, 39 more on the app’s extended palette, and the ability to create custom colours using the colour slider or by entering a Hex code.

And with all the options, came the chaos. In an attempt to highlight different types of activities with different colours, in the hope of remembering to get them done, the calendar started looking nauseatingly colourful. And chaotic!

And as the different colours overwhelmed the senses, it became increasingly tough to remember and understand priority.

So I regressed to a better format. I now use less than the initial colour options I started with. And, just as with the paradox of choice, clarity has improved. Now timebound or important matters are in red or green, and everything else is in one colour. So rather than depend on multiple colours fighting for attention while leaving me in a state of chaos, now I am required to pay attention to each to make sure nothing important gets missed out.

Have you faced any similar choice paradox that you solved by simplifying?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[the before & after screenshots are only representational. The actual calendar was far more chaotic before, & far clearer now]

Holy How?!

Holy How?!

Does god exist?

I personally do believe in faith, and in a higher power, but one without a name or face. Culture and upbringing however, do tend to influence that faith with names and appearances. 

Unlike popular belief, India does not have 330 million gods. But of the comparatively fewer we do, festivals are celebrated in the grandest ways imaginable. The next few months marks some major religious festivals, including Janmasthami (just went by), Ganesh Chaturthi and Dussehra. The days on which these festivals are celebrated each year are determined by the Hindu calendar, and not the Gregorian calendar which is followed for all other purposes. And each year, in reference to the dates on the Gregorian calendar, festival dates can vary from a few days to a few weeks (Dussehra, for instance, fell on Oct. 24th last year as per the Gregorian calendar, and it is on Oct 14 this year).

Now we have all come across sensational news stories, of deities drinking water and milk, of others crying blood, and of some appearing in the sky. And yet, more often than not, Science has had a fairly sorted out explanation for most, if not all these ‘miracles’. So, apart from Science, do other gods exist too? 😉

Believe it or not, but when it comes some festivals here in India, every single year, it always rains around midnight on Janmashtami (barring a few exceptions like this year) and during Ganesh Chaturthi. And it’s not just light random drizzles. It often pours on those days. And till a day before, you could have sworn the monsoons had passed. Holy chow, aye?

Interesting? So, the question of whether god exists or not, wasn’t to spark a debate, but to see if you have a logical explanation for this one?

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The King of Traumatic Times

How Vijay and Siddharth Mallya are handling the whole Kingfisher Airline fiasco is appalling.

In a similar situation, way back, Richard Branson sold his first and extremely-close-to-his-heart business, Virgin Records at the insistence of financial institutions, so that the resulting funds could be infused into Virgin Atlantic. He supposedly cried the day the company was sold to EMI.

Employees at Kingfisher (KF) Airlines haven’t been paid salaries for over 7 months. A few weeks ago, the wife of one KF airline engineers committed suicide as her husband had not been paid salaries for 6 months.

And here we have the shameless Mallyas who flew abroad in their private jet, away from the troubles their employees are facing.And Siddharth’s busy with bikini models abroad, working on the next KF Calendar.  What’s his plan, to tide over the crisis by selling calendars?

Respect and reputation take a lot more than parties to earn.

The “Kingfisher” turned out to be more of a Vulture. How the crisis was handled by the father-son duo was extremely ‘chicken’. And the King of Good Times, nothing more than a King of Traumatic Times.

India is ashamed with the way you’ve handled this crisis.! I suppose there still are some things that money can’t buy. Common sense?

As for United Breweries, for whatever it’s worth, I’ll definitely be avoiding your beers.

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