A Learning a Day

Every once a while, we get to witness something that is incredible. I think the energy transition that is unfolding right now falls under that category.

The Bloomberg team shared a couple of charts that tell a powerful story. Renewable power (wind and solar) are beginning to get on an exponential growth curve. They are already at 13% of global power generation and those numbers are going to look very different at the end of this decade.

Check out that exponential growth curve. It is a pity that nuclear has stagnated as it is still significantly better than some of the other sources on offer. More on that another time.

When we talk about energy transitions, someone always asks the “what about China question?” China’s adoption of renewable power generation in the past decade has been blistering.

This is all fantastic news. As this transition accelerates, our storage capacity will get better. It is a virtuous cycle.

And it is only going to get faster as renewable power continues to become cheaper. We are already at the point where it doesn’t make financial sense to not build a new solar or wind power plant to generate electricity.

And, incredibly, electricity from renewables continues to become cheaper.

Lithium-ion batteries are working to keep up as well.

Incredible.

Our propensity to make an error of judgment is directly proportional to how desperate we feel in our quest for the outcome of the moment.

I have a simple 4 x 6 months framework when I think of jobs in product management and other similar roles in technology.

It takes 6 months to get on top of the details and figure out what we want to do.

In months 7-12, we begin notching up our first set of wins and feel “in flow” (assuming some competence :-)).

Months 13-18 is when we’re on top of our game. We notch up some more wins as we reach the top of our learning curve.

In months 19-24, we realize we’ve stopped learning. It is now time to figure out what comes next.

Of course, the specifics of every person’s timeline may be a bit different (e.g., 18 months to 24 months to 30 months). But the arc tends to be consistent.

It’s just helpful to know what to expect.

It takes years of deliberate practice to show up as someone with “natural talent.”

Awareness = our ability to see things as they are vs. how we want them to be.

One of my favorite posts from Derek Sivers teaches a simple lesson – “If it isn’t a HELL YEAH, it is a no.”

Derek wrote it in context of events and new projects. The more we say no to things that don’t matter, the more space we get for things that do.

It is one of those lessons that applies well beyond new projects and events however. It works fantastically well for smaller everyday decisions.

If it isn’t a hell yeah, just say no.

And don’t say yes when you want to say no.

It shows.

In an age where our phones are ever present, one of the highest leverage things we can do is to take control of our notification settings.

Choose what you want to be notified for, when you want to be notified, and how.

The more intentional and the more granular our choices, the better.

Not choosing is also choosing.

We were watching a Disneynature special called “Ghost of the mountains.” It chronicled the arduous challenges a film crew endured in their quest to capture rare footage of a snow leopard family on the Tibetan plateau.

We love watching shows about wildlife and nature. And this special brought to light just how challenging these shows are to produce. People go to great lengths to capture incredible footage. We’re incredibly lucky to be recipients of the end product.

It is just the same when we dig deeper into other pleasures in our lives.

The deeper we dig, the more we realize how lucky we are.

When a person’s reaction to a particular stimulus feels disproportional in its intensity, it is either a result of a want of a basic need (sleep or food) or a perceived attack on something they consider to be part of their identity.

“I am not particularly anxious for the men to remember what someone else has tried to do in the past, for then we might quickly accumulate far too many things that could not be done … Hardly a week passes without some improvement being made somewhere in machine or process, and sometimes this is made in defiance of what is called “the best shop practice.” | Henry Ford

Every once a while, organizational memory can be problematic.

The key lies in not just documenting successes and failures but making the effort to establish causal understanding.

The more we attempt to understand cause and effect, the better our experiments become.