REWIRING MY BRAIN

As I have mentioned earlier, during the last two weeks or so, I was inundated with two major project appraisals initiated by my good friend, Dilip Mukerjea. They necessitated my inputs - contemplative thoughts, so to speak - from the standpoint of a project manager.

I had to use the following three softwares to present my final analyses to vested parties:

- Microsoft Powerpoint;
- Microsoft Excel;
- SmartDraw Pro;

These were the normal softwares I had used extensively in the course of my work during the corporate days, way back into the nineties, even though I had made further use of Microsoft Powerpoint from time to time until five or six years ago.

As a matter of fact, I was also more conversant with Lotus 123 than Microsoft Excel during my corporate days.

For one specific project, I needed to illustrate a series of innovative ideas for building a learning ecosystem for presentation in a logical format to the evaluation committee.

For me, Microsoft Powerpoint was the choice of software.

For the other specific project, I needed to break down a new business concept into five product or service strands to show their inter-relationships as well as their individually extended business possibilities, & also to project a 3-year sales revenue generation forecast to a "financier".

For me, SmartDraw Pro & Microsoft Excel were the best choice of software.

Unfortunately, I had not used the foregoing softwares for quite a long while.

Undaunted, I booted up the respective softwares to give it a go.

It was tough & frustrating time trying to figure out the process of re-using them, as I had forgotten many of the quick steps as well as the interesting shortcuts I had often used before.

Naturally, it took a couple of hours to struggle through the "learning curve" so to speak in each case.

Actually, after a while, it wasn't that bad after all, because past experiential memories gradually began to work miraculously through the hands or rather the fingers.

Well, I must say there is such a thing as "kinesthetic memory".

I reckon, once a brain has learned a skill set, & if we don't use the skill set say for a while, the learning memories are still there. At the beginning, the recall might be fuzzy, just as I had experienced initially, but after some time of persistent toying around with them, memories can gradually come back.

The resultant activity as described constitutes what I like to call a "rewiring" of the brain.

Before long, I could get all the presentation stuff going as intended. In fact, I had passed on my powerpoint to Dilip to embellish it with his beautiful images. The final product, running with Keynote on his Mac Pro, had turned out great.

Likewise, the resultant outputs with SmartDraw Pro & Microsoft Excel also turned out great.

The adult brain is definitely a miracle thing. All it needs occasionally is a deliberate jolt to the system, from time to time, to keep it going afresh.