Knicq

Da Vinci Code and the pursuit of excellence in the pursuit of truth and…
knicq posted in Knicqisms on July 3rd, 2006

I wasted two days of my life on The Da Vinci Code. It held me in its grip for two days, and it made me google Da Vinci’s paintings, and I liked it for that part; but by the time I finished it I was wodering why I had taken the trouble in the first place. I liked ‘The Historian’ better.

I wrote these lines many days ago, and then went off and helped myself to a kilo or two of mangoes I think. Had I been a stickler for absolute accuracy of facts, I would have made the candid admission that for the life of me I cannot remember what it was that had, at the time, diverted my attention away from completing this post. There are two important factors, however, which prevent me from striving for that excellence in the pursuit of truth and accuracy.

a) Mangoes are just better excuses.

When striving for excellence, one must extend one’s endeavours to all facets of a challenge one faces. Finding an excuse for having left the post incomplete, or to put it in a language with better chances of eliciting an approving nod from an NLP practitioner, determining the unavoidable factor leading to that post being left poised for a fresh start at a later more opportune time, requires that same pursuit of excellence to be employed whole-heartedly. Excellence as mangement-guru after mangement-guru will tell you is a whole-some process, and the excellence of end-product is a function of the excellence of the ingredients that go into the making of a product, which in this case is: An excuse… pardon me dear NLP practitioner, the-unavoidable-factor-leading-to-that-post-being-left poised-for-a-fresh-start-at-a-later-more-oppotune-time.

What could have been a better excuse than multiple kilos of mangoes to leave a post incomplete, and wander off like that? Perhaps, multiple kilos of multiple kinds of mangoes, but thats another discussion altogether.

OH! Did I say excuse again? NLP practitioner, you do know I meant the-unavoidable-factor-leading-to-that-post-being-left-poised-for-a-fresh-start at-a-later-more-oppotune-time.

b) The Colleague Factor.

It will be a rainy day in the simmering July of UAE, before I go on record admitting that I am not a stickler for absolute accuracy of facts; a colleague or two at work make an occasional visit to this place, and such a blatant admission of one’s propensity for fibbing is not the best of ideas when the audience includes your colleagues from work – especially so, when by your own public admission your J.D requires you to be less than scrupulous (Yes folks, I do have a knack for getting myself into those utterly-stupid-when-analyzed-with-the-benefit-of-hindsight spots), but I will grant you this – here and there, I make an exception and am actually less than a stickler, ever so slightly less if I may so hastily add, for the accuracy of facts.

I am glad we got that out of the way. So now, less than ever before, do I know whether it was the pursuit of excellence in the first place that kept me from a parallel pursuit of truth and accuracy, and today less than ever before do I look at myself in the mirror, and declare to myself, “I am sure if I am a stickler for the accuracy of facts or less than that – ever so slightly if ever”.

Enough, you say, for a day’s work?

I concur.