Year: 2020

Dan Heath shared an interesting case study about city of Chicago’s quest to reduce the use of single use plastic bags.

The city council started with a ban on single use plastics. But, they soon realized that this was not having the intended effect. To ensure carbon neutrality, citizens would need to use a paper bag at least thrice or a cotton bag 130 times to ensure the trade-off made sense.

They didn’t.

The city council then replaced it with a 7% tax on all paper and plastic checkout bags that started in early 2017. A research team lead by economist Tatiana Homonoff found that the use of single use plastic bags went down from 80% to 50%.

As shoppers had to make a more conscious choice, many either skipped using a bag altogether or made a conscious effort to use their own.

I thought this story was fascinating for three reasons. First, it reiterates the idea that there are no solutions – only trade-offs.

Second, I love the approach the Chicago City Council took. I wish there was a central repository for city councils all over the world to learn from these experiments.

And, finally, it goes to show how hard it is to get upstream interventions right.

In the first version of my phone’s home screen (~2010), I did my best to fit all my most used apps. I was optimizing for ease and convenience.

In the second version (~2015), I reorganized the home screen based on apps I wanted to use.

In the third version (~2019), I focused on only using half the home screen’s real estate as I embraced more simplicity in every aspect of my life.

As I reflected on the positive effects of increased simplicity in my life during my half yearly reflection two weeks back, I realized it was time for v4.

It is a keeper.

We had a 3 hour power outage in the middle of the night yesterday. It spurred a few reflections. Here are my top 5 –

1) Our first instinct when the power went out was to figure out if it was an issue only in our home. A quick check confirmed our whole neighborhood was affected. The next instinct was to get on Google/check our power authority’s website which, in turn, pointed us to their Twitter feed. Within minutes, the Twitter feed came alive with official updates and reports from folks who saw sparks outside their home (caused by falling branches). It was a wonderful example of what Twitter the product does a great job facilitating.

2) Our sleep was very disturbed for the next 3 hours. And, its effects showed through the day. I’ve written plenty about the effect sleep has on optimism and positivity. And, today was definitely one of those days I held on longer to any negative inputs.

3) As I tossed and turned, I recollected fond memories of frequent middle-of-the-night power outages during a summer two decades back. During these outages, many of our neighbors used to get out onto the road and onto their terraces/rooftops. As sleeping in the sweltering Chennai heat was impossible, this transformed an uncomfortable situation into a fun, communal, gathering.

4) That in turn reminded me of a crazy fact – I can’t remember the last time I experienced a 3 hour power outage. It has definitely been more than a decade. A sign of accumulated privilege I take for granted.

5) In the midst of the outage, we wondered if it’d last long enough to mess with our workday and/or spoil the food in the fridge. It reminded me again of the invisible nature of accumulated privilege (this note made me ponder that some more) – I take so much for granted on a daily basis.

There is so much to be grateful for.

A sure-fire way to ruin happiness in close relationships is to assign permanence to one-time mistakes when sharing feedback (“you always do this”/”you’ve been doing this a lot of late”).

Focus on the situation at hand.

Ignore the baggage.

Don’t transforms dots to lines unless necessary.

“Now I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law. In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it.

Then, we compute– well, don’t laugh, that’s really true. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law that we guessed is right, we see what it would imply. And then we compare those computation results to nature. Or we say, compare to experiment or experience. Compare it directly with observation, to see if it works.

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. And that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.” | Richard Feynman

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Such a simple and beautiful articulation of the scientific method.

It has lots of powerful parallels to building and designing technology products.

Character is the set of mental and moral characters that are unique to a person. And, it shows up as a composite of our daily habits and behaviors.

Every once a while, we have the pleasure of meeting folks with a strong character – the sort that seems to revel in adversity and never lose sight of the importance of doing the right thing.

And, one of the things I’ve learnt about folks with strong characters – nine times out of ten, they experienced a painful failure or loss that made them who they are.

This painful failure or loss isn’t unique to these folks – most people on the planet experience them.

Instead, these folks are unique in their determination to grow from these experience. They use the heat and fire to forge themselves and get made.

So, the next time you encounter someone with unusually strong character and mental strength, just ask them to tell you their story. Look out for a story about a defining failure or loss.

It’ll be a good one.

Asked about whether taking shots in clutch/last minute situations ever worried him, Michael Jordan responded – “Why would I think about missing a shot I haven’t taken?” 

It is a question I intend to ask myself more often.

After all, worrying about things that haven’t happened is a guaranteed way to lose twice.

All we control is what we do in the here and now. Best to pay attention to that.

In 2016, ~25% of the packages from Dutch e-bike company Vanmoof arrived damaged. These numbers were particularly high in shipments to the US. And, despite trying multiple shipping partners, the results weren’t any different.

That was until their cofounder realized that their boxes were the size of flat screen televisions – and those never arrived damaged because of how carefully they were handled.

Ergo their new packaging -> they placed their bike in a flatscreen television image on the box.

Shipping damage dropped ~80%.

Small creative changes can have disproportionate impact.

It is natural to feel stuck/sense a lack of clarity at the end of a day when things didn’t go our way.

On such days, it is tempting to attempt to push through and make some progress.

But, the right response is to generally stop what we’re doing and get some sleep.

The combination of rest, renewed optimism, and fresh perspective have a way of making the puzzles that troubled us the previous day feel much more tractable and approachable.

We recently bought some frozen pizza from Costco. As we didn’t grow up in the US, we had no idea that frozen pizza was a 5 billion dollar industry (!).

And, we subsequently got curious as to how frozen pizza is made.

After watching the above video, we realized that it could be surprising/amazing/shocking/totally expected (/insert other emotion) depending on your point of view.

If you’re one of those who believes industrial kitchens operated by robots is the future of food, you’ll likely love what you see.

For the uninitiated (like us), it is fascinating insight into how frozen food is made.

PS: Very grateful for explainer videos like this one – we’re going to be exploring these kinds of videos a lot more in the coming months.