Category: Everything else

Internal seasons

Of late, I’ve begun to think of states of mind as analogous to the weather and seasons. For example, this is what I associate the seasons with –

Spring – excitement and endless possibilities. This is time for action.
Summer – all is well and feels great. Won’t last forever so enjoy it while it lasts and save for winter.
Autumn – still pretty but surfaces the first signs of caution as winter is coming
Winter – tough and unforgiving and demands shorter strides

I’ve learnt a couple of things from this analogy –

1. Simple frameworks go a long way in helping us process what’s going on. This season analogy, for instance, helps me process how I’m feeling and then understand what the appropriate next step should be.

2. I wonder how our internal weather correlates with the external weather.

3. I think it helps if you treat your internal weather like how you might treat the weather outside, i.e., don’t take it too seriously (sadly, too few do this). Wear your winter coat but don’t compromise on your energy or spirit.

4. And, finally, I am always amazed as to how quickly the weather can change. When I look back, there have been moments that have dramatically shifted how I feel. One phone call about an incredible opportunity that worked out can change the weather forecast for an entire year.

The conclusion, for me, is one I seem to end up at from so many seemingly different angles – be aware of how you’re feeling, understand why, do something about it and, regardless of how good or bad it feels at the moment, keep plugging away. Good stuff happens..

Things that will not change

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was recently asked about what Amazon might look ten years from now given all the changes sweeping through the world thanks to technology.

His response was that, instead of looking at what would change in the next decade, Amazon preferred to look at what would not change. So, there may be big shifts in the devices customers use to shop, for example, but customers will always favor low prices. A focus on things that will not change helps anchor Amazon to its objectives.

News websites and blogs called described this line as “Jeff Bezos’ advice to entrepreneurs.”

I think of it as advice for life. As we think about our lives in the coming years and decades, it should be clear that a lot of what we think will happen will not actually take place and that there will be more change in the way we do things than you and I can probably imagine. Instead of focusing on that, we’re better off focusing on what won’t change – our values and principles. It is worth thinking intentionally about these values and principles as we adapt to all that happens around us.

Despite its focus to lower prices and deliver a customer-centric experience, Amazon does make the odd misstep. We will, too. Change demands a relentless focus on what really matters.

It won’t be easy… but, boy, will it be worth it.

Despicable behavior and internet ethics

Critic Anita Sarkeesian has been the subject of intense harassment and abuse (a.k.a “trolling”) from the gaming community after sharing her views on how women are portrayed in video games. She shared 1 week of tweets from trolls from on her blog last week. Just as a preview, she has the following content warning before her tweets – Content warning for misogyny, gendered insults, victim blaming, incitement to suicide, sexual violence, rape and death threats.

Now, a question – how many of those who tweeted would have the guts to say that to her in person?

I would be surprised if one out of every hundred had real courage. The most courageous people would look to give Anita a call and discuss her point of view or perhaps disagree with her with a critique on her own. Despicable behavior is a hallmark of gutless cowards. And, unfortunately, such pseudo-macho behavior is a hallmark of cowardly male behavior on the internet.

There are 2 thoughts that come straight to mind –
1. In short term, Twitter needs to take a hard stand against trolling. We need to think of it as bouncers in a club. Users should be given a warning (strike 1), thrown out for a few days for abusive tweeting (strike 2) and then banned from the service altogether if there’s a third strike. I know this would run counter to the typical social media mantra of “we want all the users we can get,” but, Twitter is fairly niche and is really well positioned to take such a stand. (And, it looks like they’re thinking about it)

And, my hypothesis is that a few such actions will stop the rest from such behavior. Cowardice doesn’t do too well with hard action. It is just a question of creating norms – you rarely see such trolls on LinkedIn..

2. In the long term, we need more education and discussion around ethics on the internet. I spent a lot of time as a secondary student learning to write letters as part of the English curriculum. Now, I write letters just once a year but, at least, some of those learnings have been useful in the world of email. Services like Twitter are completely new territory and we need to think intentionally about ethics and norms.

And, the other question for the long term is whether we can figure out ways to reduce emotional distance between two people on services like Twitter. Emotional distance is what makes it easy for a coward to throw insults on Twitter but not in person. It doesn’t feel as “real” and we forget that the people at the other end are real people – a lot like us (see Derek Sivers’ excellent 3 min video if you haven’t as yet). I’m not sure how we’d do that as yet. But, there has to be a way. And, I’m sure we’ll find it.

Shorter strides

The skies delivered 19 odd inches of snow in our area this weekend. Yesterday was bright and sunny and the snow had just begun to melt. I normally walk fast with as long a stride as I can muster. As I began doing that today, I felt my snow boot slip just a bit a couple of times. Cue: a change of style – I needed to take shorter strides.

It worked like a charm.

There must have been inspiration in the air as I realized right then that I’d stumbled onto an interesting learning. It begins and ends with the core idea – when in slippery territory, take shorter strides.

I think this idea has many many applications –
When low on budget in your company, design experiments with quicker feedback cycles and undertake fewer expansive projects.
In a poker game that is high stakes and “loose,” keep your money close and play tight. Weigh every move carefully.
When you’re slipping on your life’s “process,” slow down and start taking small steps towards getting back into the zone.
When you’re running out of money in your start-up, focus on your customers and cut out any additional projects (inspiring ex-entrepreneur and VC Ben Horowitz describes this as the difference between peace-time and war-time).
When in a challenging period where every second of your productivity counts, plan out every half an hour in your day carefully. Sweat the small stuff.

Summer will eventually arrive, of course. We will then be able to take longer carefree strides and try out our ambitious and expansive bets. But, not now.

Winter is all about difficult weather and slippery terrain. It is about nailing the basics and ensuring we have enough to make it till summer. For now, we’ll just focus on shorter strides..

Seeking tension – the MLK Jr. way

Martin Luther King Jr., in a famous letter from Birmingham Jail, said –

“There is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

He makes a profound point – tension is not a necessary evil, it is a necessity. It needs to not be avoided, but welcomed.

So, we must seek it in every form – the tension that comes from having set a tough target, the tension that comes from the expectation to prepare hard and perform, the tension that comes from holding two conflicting ideas, the tension that comes from making a tough values based decision and the tension from having difficult conversations that matter.

Move towards tension and the struggle it brings and conquer it repeatedly with great processes that you develop as you go.

Growth can’t help but follow..

Availability bias, news, and Google vs. Apple/Amazon

I think it is possible that the amount of news coverage an event receives today equals ten years of news coverage in the 18th century. This amount of chatter greatly affects perception. And, the amount of chatter is definitely not correlated to accuracy.

An example from this week is the news on the earnings from all the major technology companies. We had news from Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. A lot of the news in the past 4 years around Apple (since Steve Jobs left) has revolved around whether Apple has what it takes to continue making money without their visionary founder. And, until a year ago, I was in that camp.

And, this last quarter, Apple sold 74 billion dollars of products. To put that number in context, that is more than the revenue of a collection of the next few technology firms (Microsoft, Google, Facebook) put together. And, in that one quarter, Apple’s profits were larger than Google’s revenues. There are similar negative perceptions about Amazon’s stock. Google, on the other hand, has had a consistent stream of positive press for its ‘moon shots’.

But, here’s a dose of reality –
– Apple makes money by selling premium devices to the high end of the market. The high end of the market isn’t going away any time soon.
– Amazon is still less than 2% of North American retail and, once cloud computing takes off completely, Amazon Web Services could dwarf its e-commerce sales in 10 years.
– Google is searching for ways to compensate for its declining advertising revenue by investing in a whole host of businesses. Google’s stronghold was on the desktop/laptop. Mobile hasn’t worked nearly as well. That’s not to say it won’t figure out the next step. It is just that the news around Google in comparison to firms like Apple is often dis proportionally positive.

All this news and chatter affects our perception. Information that is easily available to us feels right because we can easily recall it when making decisions. But, just because we’ve heard something 10 times doesn’t necessarily mean it is right. Availability bias, however, is something we fall prey to repeatedly and is a big part of being human.

The <15 word summary of the post so far could very well be interpreted as – ‘Beware news. Dig deep to understand what is really going on.’

But, the point I’m hoping to make is a level deeper – it is to think intentionally about the content we consume. This means –
1. Audit your sources of content – news, feeds, facebook, twitter, linkedin friends, etc. – and understand where we develop points of view on what’s going on in the world
2. Develop a content consumption habit and plan in alignment with the sort of person you want to be. If you want to think deeply about the automotive industry, find the best automotive industry blog and shelve time spent on reading stuff that doesn’t add value

These small decisions inform the way we think about and approach the world and our lives. Let’s approach them with care.

When to be disappointed and when not to be

When to be disappointed
When you ‘mail it in’ instead of giving the process your best shot
When you don’t prepare as well as you should have
When you don’t perform to the best of your ability
When you don’t relax and enjoy the occasion

When not to be disappointed / when disappointment is wasted emotion
When you aren’t picked
When the result isn’t what you’d have liked
When there was someone more suited for what you were going for than you
When you didn’t click with the people you were in conversations with

When I was a secondary/high school student, I cared about my exam performance a great deal. And, the fact that my parents’ questions revolved around whether I had prepared well and given it my best shot used to infuriate me. I didn’t understand it and couldn’t get why they didn’t see my point – I didn’t care how well I prepared. I only cared that the results turned out good.

I was obviously wrong.

As you can tell, the message here isn’t ‘don’t be disappointed’ or ‘avoid disappointment.’ It is – learn when to be disappointed and when not to be. Be very disappointed if you didn’t do the process justice. And, use that disappointment to inform the next process. There is no excuse to make the same mistake twice.

If you did do the process justice, let go. This is hard to stomach. But, that’s about all you can do.

In the long run, doing the process justice is all that is going to matter. The cream always rises to the top..

If by Rudyard Kipling

There came a moment yesterday when I was reminded of ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling. So, I whipped my phone out, searched for it and read it aloud.

I first read the poem in my English textbook in my 8th grade and I loved it. For the uninitiated, it is Kipling’s letter to his son. I’ve posted the poem here a few times in the past 7 years but, somehow, it never gets old. Even to this day, there are some lines I repeat to myself at times – “if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too,” “and yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise,” and “if you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.” There are many incredibly powerful lines and, no matter what your current emotional state or need may be, I trust you’ll find a line that resonates.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

He definitely left the best for the last and this also happens to be one of my mom’s favorite lines. “If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, yours is the world and everything that’s in it” – never a truer word spoken. Thank you, Mr.Kipling.

Chatter and MYOB

I reflected on a recent remark I heard about our age being the ‘age of chatter.’ Thanks to social media and the fact that every person has a megaphone and an audience (of sorts – depending on the medium), there is an unprecedented amount of talk about what’s going on in the present.

This presents a few challenges to people trying to get stuff done. For example, the start-up founder going through the struggle sees hundreds of reminders about fellow start-up founders who seem to be enjoying fame, glory and an abundance of venture capitalist attention. Some of these guys were his classmates at school and their lives seem ideal. Where did he go wrong?

The difficulty with all this chatter is that it is hard to differentiate between the signal and the noise. Additionally, even if some of these awesome success stories are accurate, they’re only accurate in the short term. The long game is a different matter altogether. However, as human beings, we are, on average, poor at thinking about the long term. So, some of this chatter can chip away at our self-confidence. And, self-confidence is a critical element of long term success.

The solution? MYOB – Mind Your Own Business.

Every person tends to have their own squiggly lined path to wherever they are headed. If they work well and hard, the squiggly lined path can generally be a little less squiggly. But, over time, things work out in one way or the other. And, if they don’t, we tend to learn something valuable – which isn’t a bad outcome. But, it is hard to keep this perspective if we try to process all the chatter around us.

So, it is vital we embrace MYOB. Keep calm, keep focused and keep plugging away. In the long run, good processes lead to good results.

Crazy odds and star stuff

It doesn’t really matter what you want to do – the odds are always crazy. Every time we move forward to accomplish something meaningful, we take on even crazier odds. Think about the entrepreneur who overcame incredible challenges to make a billion dollars. Did she stop then? No, she took on the challenge to do something even more worthwhile with that money.

If the odds of overcoming your next challenge are playing on your mind, just remember Carl Sagan’s note on the magic of this moment –

‘You are alive right this second. That is an amazing thing. When you consider the nearly infinite number of forks in the road that lead to any single person being born, you must be grateful that you’re you at this very second. Think of the enormous number of potential alternate universes where, for example, your great-great-grandparents never meet and you never come to be. Moreover, you have the pleasure of living on a planet where you have evolved to breathe the air, drink the water, and love the warmth of the closest star. You’re connected to the generations through DNA — and, even farther back, to the universe, because every cell in your body was cooked in the hearts of stars. We are star stuff, my dad famously said, and he made me feel that way.’

If the next challenge doesn’t quite work out, the one after that will. The odds will never get easier. But, as Carl Sagan points out, we are “star stuff.”

PS: An easy way to never forget we’re capable of magic – just give someone you like an unexpected hug and thank them for being amazing.