How do we know what we want?

I keep hearing from all sides that we should enjoy life, do things that we truly enjoy. But how do we know what those things are?

Other day, a friend of mine, started talking about formula 1 racing. He told so many absolutely fascinating things about this race – the technology involved in building these cars, the real time data analysis that goes on during the race, the brakes that charge the batteries which get used during the race itself….

Can you imagine that all 4 tires need to be replaced 2-3 times during the race (race lasting about 2 hours) and average time that it takes for car to leave the track and get back to race with new tires is around 7 seconds! Yes, 7 seconds, not 7 minutes. And that including refueling the car!

I immediately got a surge of motivation to know more about this race, follow it on TV and so on. Looked like something I would thoroughly enjoy.

But then another thought occurred. There could be hundreds or thousands of things out there which are within my reach and could fascinate me as much or even more. It is just that that I don’t know about them, just the way I did not know about Formula 1 racing till yesterday.

And that is the dilemma I am trying to address here.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there could be an app that could just tell me the top activities that would fascinate me the most?

Seems easier said than done.

What I just said would involve-

• • An app that knows about all the possible activities that currently exist in the world.
  • Know a lot (I mean a lot) about me…
    • My financial situation – to determine what activities I could afford (this is an easy one!).
    • My health, my family circumstances and so on – for the same reasons.
    • Here is the big one – The app should know ME in details. My genetic make up, my history from childhood (what type of things I like, what I hate and so on), my goals and many more such details.
  • With the above knowledge the app would give me the recommendations which would work best for just me – not for you or anyone else in the world.

This probably needs the computing power  of Watson – the computer that defeated Jeopardy world champions couple of years back.

Is it even possible!

Interestingly, indications are within couple of decades it could be and probably will be.

So yes, if you really want to do what you like the most, you have to wait couple of decades.

Till then – I guess, continue to do with what you ‘think’ you like the most.

Neeraj