You hear a lot of complaints from many people being in quarantine these days. Shops, coffees, restaurants getting closed. Countries getting into lockdown.
Many people are yelling and stressing too much about this situation.
I cannot concentrate.
I feel terrible about staying at home.
I miss the old days when I got the chance to go outside with my family and friends.
This is not fair.
If we look back into history, during such times, there were people who used their time wisely. They did not waste all their days bingeing Netflix shows and getting notifications about the latest statistics of the infections all over the world.
In 1666, a spread of the black plague was forcing people to isolate.
So did, Isaac Newton, the 23-year-old student of the University of Cambridge, who went home during that time, as the university closed its doors to help stop the spread of the disease.
He did not have Zoom to attend his classes online.
Instead, he started challenging himself to answer difficult mathematical questions.
He did not have the latest iPad and Apple Pen.
It was just a plain notebook with a 1000-page notebook that he inherited from his father, which he called “Waste Book”.
During this school break, he invented calculus. Through focus and commitment. Patience and hard work, not complaints.
Calculus is a field of mathematics that has broad applications, especially in Data Science.
You can read his notebook yourself online at the University’s website.
If you have time and want to learn calculus, this is a free course offered by Khan Academy, taught by the famous instructor, 3Blue1Brown.
Now let’s stop complaining. Let’s get back to work.
Let’s make the world a better place.
