Forward Hindsight is the name of my friend Ashish’s company in Minneapolis, MN. It was because of this company name did I learn the English world: Hindsight.
Hindsight: recognition of the realities, possibilities, or requirements of a situation, event, decision etc., after its occurrence.
I started to love this word, and started to appreciate the name of Ashish’s company – how good it will be to have forward hindsight.
Photography
In University, I attended a class named “Photography”. The experienced photographer taught us how to take great photos. The key learning was, always keep notes before you take any photo on your notebook. Write down
– why you want to take this photo.
– what you want the viewers to see.
– what techniques you use to archive that
– what the final photo look like in your mind
– how you did to make it better.
After you write down all these on the notebook, you can take the photo. At that time, there were not digital camera, and you need to wait for the film to be developed before you see it. After you get the result (the photo), you can compare it with the note you took, and find out what is different from you see, and improve it the next time.
Today, I don’t now how digital photography impacted people’s photograph skill. It may improve it because it shortened the feedback loop, but it may also make it harder to master the beauty of nature, because people think less about taking photos – they always have chances to re-do it if the photo on LCD display is not perfect.
Decision Making
We all make decisions of all kinds, like what stock to buy, when to buy it; what house to buy; what car to buy; which school to attend, or what event to attend when there are many.
For all the decisions, I wonder if I can lesson to my photography teacher, and apply what he taught: write down the decision making process on a piece of paper, or on this blog if it is public, and take actions to make the decision. Then after a while, revisit the reasons of the decision and compare it with the result – that is the way people learn. Most people do it implicitly. I will try to make it explicit, and I hope that will continue to help me to learn and make better decisions in the future – that is, get the most out of the same experience.