Tuesday, June 20, 2006

D-P Ratio !!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls and children of all ages, you are extremely fortunate to be reading this. I am going to introduce you to one of the most phenomenal tools ever discovered in the history of mankind. This going to change your life for good. You are never going to be the same again. Here I bring it to you the chosen ones - “D-P Ratio “.

Ok enough of publicity stunt. Am I not good at marketing? No? At least I did a good enough job of holding your attention till now which most of the TV commercials never manage to do.

So what is all this hype about D-P ratio? Let me explain it in Detail.

D-P is an acronym for Desire-Potential. D-P ratio can be calculated for every action of ours be it the job we do, the games we play, the relationships we are in, the subject we study etc. Each of our action is characterized by these two parameters Desire- How much we want to do a particular thing? Potential – How good are we at doing it?

Have you ever wondered why do you hate what you are doing? Why are you not able to do what you want to do? The answer ladies and gentlemen lies in D-P Ratio.

Let me explain further. For example consider me. I sit and do coding all day although I am not particularly fond of it. Hence here my desire for coding is less (say 5 out of 10). But I am extremely good at coding (say my potential for coding is 9 out of 10). Even though I may hate doing what I am doing but since I am extremely good at it I am not doing that bad in life (by whose standards? By societal standards. Not mine). Here my D-P ratio becomes 5/9 which is approximately equal to 0.56.

Now let’s consider this case. I very badly want to be a singer. Here my desire is say 10. But I am very bad at singing (ok not very bad but yeah a bit bad ;)). Hence my potential of becoming a singer is very less say 2. Hence my D-P ratio for becoming a singer becomes 5. If I were to choose a career as a singer, I am going to end up with a screwed up life.

Hence the ideal D-P ratio for any action should be 1. If it is equal to 1 then you would love doing it and at the same time you would be extremely good at it.

So to summarize:

If

D-P Ratio is 1 – Just do it. There is nothing like it.

D-P Ratio is < 1 – You would be good at it but you may actually not be happy doing it.

D-P Ratio is >>1 – Though you love to do this but you are not good at it. So it would be foolish to keep doing it-look for a change over or look at ways to improve your potential and bring down your D-P ratio.

This concept is applicable to every action of ours. So guys thank me for introducing you to such a life changing ratio (Ok I am back to my Narcissist best). Reap the benefits of this ratio. I am not demanding any royalty for it (as if I am going to get ;)). I would be happy knowing if at least one of you benefited from it (ok Avi don’t become senti now ;)).

And yeah before anybody can plagiarize it I am patenting this ratio. ;)

18 comments:

musafir said...

I think you need to clarify how your usage of potential differs from ability (or aptitude, in some cases). A person with potential need not be one with ability. Ability (like skill) has a lot to do with both talent (aptitude again) and practice. And ability translates itself across disciplines. So it might be the case that although you think you have the desire for something and not the ability, a little introspection may reveal that you are not applying your aptitude properly. A few examples that come to mind are 1) trying to quit smoking and 2) what people do in bed.

Moreover, the psychology behind a person's ability has a lot to do with his desire i.e. desire and ability are not totally unrelated.

Cool ratio, though. But must admit I've read more complex versions of it - like here for instance (How could I not rain on your parade? What are friends for huh?)

Sindhuja Parthasarathy said...

Gud one,Sir.Unfortunately,a 'motivation theory' spoke abt something similar much earlier :(( Great minds,eh?!

catch 22 said...

@ Musafir - Thanks man for the article. It was real good. What ever I said is already there. I jus wrote this one on a sleepless night jus pondering over things. I have used potential here for ability.

@ Samudraa - I have said nothing new. What ever I said is very obvious but this world has an affinity towards blinding themselves against obvious things.

The Man Who Wasnt There said...

Ah 'objective' parameters again eh?
Oh my dear wannabe-Daniel-Coleman do tell me how do I assign values to the parameters involved? I mean how do I say my desire is 5 or 5.25 or 6 or 7.34567..err..you get the picture right? Is it 'relative grading'?In that case what constitutes "10"? And hypothetically speaking suppose i have the highest desire to commit suicide (so rating 10 or any number you desire) but I dont have the 'ability' to do it (so 0) does that mean my ratio is 'infinity'? does that mean I am a living dead?

Err....one of those days....:P

catch 22 said...

@ Girish - I dint expect any better ;P

Karthik said...

I know it's a old one, but lemme ask .. Suppose i neither have the desire nor the potential to do something, then ??? Old classic case of 0/0 .. Aneeways i never believe in numbers !!! U shud write one of these sick(no generalisation - my view), self help books which sell well !!!

catch 22 said...

@ Karthik - I have never read any self help book till date nor hav i read any autobiographies. have always believed what works for one need not work for another. Me writing a book itself is unlikely that too a self help book impossible.

Sneha said...

good one! but how does one measure his 'potential' accurately(ie. on a scale of 10)?? i THINK i sing well, say 8/10, but the listener might be cursing me! hehe..!

Rashmi Kantharaja said...

LOL!!
Jokes apart, Makes sense , man!
Indeed makes complete sense!

catch 22 said...

@ Sneha - Thats a million dollar question. We need to have certin parameters for each action and depending on those parameters we judge how good we are. And you decides those parameters we do.

@ Rashmi - It certainly does

Anonymous said...

Hey, nothin personal, but whats your D-P ratio for bloggin?:). (how many make a 'score'?)

catch 22 said...

@ Prashanth - I knew this was coming :p

Neha said...

did u think up all this by urself? amazing :D

really.. had me engrossed..lol.. now ill try and calculate the DP ratio for my life too..

catch 22 said...

@ Neha - Was that a sarcastic comment ;).

Hamlet said...

This is a cool concept. I salute you :-)
What if your desire to do something is 1, and your potential is also one.
You'd have a D/P ration of 1.. So you'd hate what you do, and you would suck at it.. but statistically speaking, you should keep doing what your doing!

catch 22 said...

@ Hamlet - Common sense prevails at times :)

Anonymous said...

:: Don't Publish ::
I came through your profile and its really strange dat ur favorite books are Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged, So you prooved dat u really have patience to read those books, only few people likes such books. By the way my name is bairavi.

catch 22 said...

@ Bairavi - Yeah it takes a lot of patience in addition to courage to read those books. I have seen people abandoning after 50 pages. It requires an unbiased mind to read rand. Do you blog ?