“I don’t think there exists a solution for the problem”

Whether you’re a researcher, an analyst, an attorney, an engineer, or anyone that requires a lot of analytical thinking in their professional life, for that matter, at some point in time, you’d scream out loud, “I’m at my wits’ end. I don’t think there is a solution for the problem. I give up!”

Despite being ridiculously intelligent and resilient creatures, humans often have a strong tendency to run away from difficulties rather than facing them. Private lives apart, when it comes to the professional front, it does happen that despite being a sturdy never-give-up personality, one might have faced rejection so many times that giving up looks like the most plausible option.

Consider a prior art searcher, for instance, sitting on his desk executing search queries to find prior art for a patent, which if invalidated, could save the client millions of dollars in royalties. It’s the last day for the search and everything that he could think of was already done.

But he executes one last query, a bit broad this time so that nothing is missed up. The query returns 650 search results, each of which the searcher has to go through, to find whether the results might have a hint of a prior art. He starts early in the day and its almost past evening. 200 search results still need to be looked at and no hint of prior-art.

Perplexed, the searcher continues reading through the patents. It’s almost midnight.185 down, 15 remaining.  He glances through the titles of the remaining 15 patents and it looks like the client may have to pay millions in royalties.

Tired, the searcher is in a dilemma – Grab a cup of coffee and read remaining patents or give up the search and call it a day. The second option looks more appealing. He closes his eyes for a moment and recollects a mail sent by his boss the other day.

Straightening his posture, he begins reading the last 15 patent results. 10 minutes later, he jumped from his chair and gave himself a pat on his back for not giving up. In the 7^th to the last result, he found the exact prior art for the patent the client was blamed to have infringed.

What was the subject of the mail? What served as the motivation for the searcher to continue checking the patents?

Law of Averages.

Recently, everyone at GreyB received an email from Deepak, one of the Directors, in which he introduced the team to law of averages, via a YouTube video, courtesy of Improvement pill, giving them a reason why one should never give up while also sharing how this law applies to each one of us, irrespective of our roles.

Since we believe in sharing everything that makes us better, below we have attached Deepak’s original mail to the team.

Do chime in the comment section and share your thoughts on the law of averages and what motivates you to not give up.

Hello All,

Have you ever heard of law of averages?

It is one great ideology which tells you to never give up looking, ever.

Today, I found a great video which describes this concept in sales domain, but truth be told, this concept is applicable in every industry and every other department.

I often cite this ideology to everyone in operations about how you should not stop looking because it could be that on the last day, the last query that you have executed has the relevant result as the last result.

In fact, I personally have experienced this where the results from the last few queries (which I could have skipped) were the ones that we were looking for.

Many people may skip that.

And that is the only reason why only few people rise, because they were the only ones who never gave up and explored till the end.

It might be hard, but at the end of the day, it’s the one who persists wins.

Here’s the YouTube video, courtesy- improvement pill.

Keep winning!

Deepak