What Next?

I am 25 years old! That is around 1/3 of my life time. What I have done all these years? Quarter century has passed in my life and I don’t see even one concrete achievement in my resume. Well, I don’t want to sound like a lazy fellow or a overly modest guy. I know I went through so many tough patches in my life and each time I managed to come out of it unburnt! I did manage learn a lot of things which is enough to distinguish me from an average person.

I am in a company which is admired by people (especially of my interest – algorithms). So what next? Sit and relax for the rest of the life (of course work is there ) and die a normal death? My heart fails to accept this plan! I want to look forward and aim high. At this moment, I realize the importance of setting a goal for myself which will help me improve myself. What that goal can be? I want a goal which will be there for my lifetime! I want to ‘run a race’ which might not end… I can think of only one highly ambitious goal which can keep me going.

The goal is to ‘leave something to this world so that I will be remembered even after my death’.

If I say ‘this goal came to me only now’, then I am lying. This idea was there for a long time. Now it is time to ‘try’ to give a shape for this. Since I spent a good chunk of my adulthood with Algorithms, Computability and Maths, is there something I can do in this field which can help me to achieve my goal? There are plenty of things in thid field. But am I capable of doing them? For example can I set unrealistic goals like ‘Solving Riemann Hypothesis’? There is nothing wrong in that. How much ever unrealistic the goal is, every step I make towards it (like a man climbing the mount Everest by foot) takes me one step nearer to the goal! But if I don’t reach the goal, what is the use? A person running in a 100m race, managed to reach only the 99th meter and not the 100th! Don’t you call him a loser? So am I supposed to consider myself a loser if I don’t reach my goal? Or can I feel happy for crossing all the 99 meters (which in itself is a big achievement if your goal is high) and ‘rest in peace’? The answer to these questions are ‘psychological’ and differs from person to person.

So after contemplating all these points, I came to one conclusion – “I am still not matured enough to single out a goal” (What a pity! ). But I can narrow down the ‘area’ where my goal will be in the end. The area covers my interests and I call it ‘Interest cloud’. My interest cloud currently contains,

‘Algorithms, Number Theory, Artificial Intelligence, Theory of Computation, Calculus, Riemann Hypothesis, Work related to prime numbers, Graph Theory, Unsolved problems in CS, Cosmology (relativity, string theory included), Quantum Theory, Research”

I have decided to concentrate on this cloud and learn stuff. I want to set myself short term goals and see what percentage of them are going to be achieved by me within the deadline.

So I came out with a rough plan and some tight (unrealistic) deadlines,

1. Practice Algorithm problems (SPOJ, TC, etc) – Solve (50 TC problems + 15 on SPOJ) before 17-Oct-2008
2. Read algorithm books (Graph theory, String algorithms, Number theory) – Finish Enumerative combinatorics + Elementary Number theory before 1-Nov-2008
3. Finish Godel-Escher-Bach book (Before September 15th)
4. Expand my maths knowledge (Try to understand RH – complex calculus) – Understand Zeros of Zeta before 1-Oct-2008
5. Finish all 4 volumes of Art of Computer Programming (before 17-July-2010)

I set the goal in such a way that, I will not achieve them within the given deadlines That will keep me motivated to improve.

PS: With reference to my earlier post even after 1.5 months, I still say the free food here rocks (though I have started missing my mom’s cooking)