Learning this year, Part 2

Continuing this curation. Part 1 here.

1. Being “super comfortable with uncertainty” is a skill to have in current times. >> To be able to “sit with the discomfort”, soak in the information, identify the patterns, try poking it to see if we see some paths forward, keep making the way in. I think we get into more and more such situations where everything is not known and there is need to control the anxiety in the moment.
2. Builder vs Gardner - someone who builds a new thing vs another who gathers pebbles and structures, trusting natural things to grow, allowing to become something beautiful. Open to possibilities. Systems Architect has a possibility to be a gardener. >> Felt that is beautiful construct. In my mind, a Japanese garden that someone made in the middle of a rural American suburb full of farmlands and wilderness, is the standard. I used to pass it on my way to work every day for a few years and once in a while, on the weekend or so, stop and enter. It is visited by people rarely, things appear to grow naturally, but there must be careful hands creating the conditions, peace must be the feeling when we are in it, never saw the gardener, except some of the instructions written about how to be in a garden like that. That could be a good analogy for a system created by a careful system architect / gardener.
3. How we do the small things is how we do the big things. How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we are willing to overlook, becomes our standard. >> Recurring theme in Amit Verma’s “The Seen and the Unseen” podcast and his articles (The India Uncut). To remind that what we become is not the result of something we postpone doing on a later date but result of everyday habits and actions. And the last line I picked from a random talk by a leader felicitating award winners and felt it is a good way of putting it – whether I tolerate mediocrity and if so is that what I accept as the standard.
4. Editing tips - replace adjectives with a description, like very beautiful replaced with what makes something very beautiful. Cut unnecessary words. Repeat things at the beginning and end. Describe things since the reader may not have the same world view or context as you. >> I am a sucker for writing tips and continue to gather such, with the hope of it seeping into the practice.
5. Life happens to me vs I make life happen. Victim vs Creator. “To me” vs “By me” >> I got fascinated by High Agency concept for some time now – maybe the fad among the tech bros, but like when we categorize people into two types, one useful lens is to see “low agency” vs “high agency” attributes of people. This could be picked up from the words and actions (or inaction) of someone.
6. Don't pay attention to the words but look at the action to know what people really mean. Don't pay attention to what they say, but to what they do. I wish to not deceive anyone with words, that I cannot follow up with action. >> Hope to use it as a gauge, do I only talk about something or follow through with action.
7. Our brains are constantly processing overload of information. Cutting off for even two weeks would reset the brain to a different hum. Emotional responses to seemingly distant events, triggered by social media and infinite scroll vs what really gives us happiness. >> Digital detox, slow productivity, consuming long form content (long read, book vs tweet; documentary or movies vs reels), slow living, slow food – maybe age is making me realize the value more.
8. Dunbar's numbers - 1 BFF / 2 GFFs (for men vs women), 5 friends/family on whose shoulder we can cry, 15 who are sympathetic, 150 who may come to an event and 1500 acquaintances. Friendship cycles like ripples with lesser connection in bigger circles. If we don't meet someone atleast once a week or once a month, the connection drops to the next circle. Men don't keep up with remote friends, but women keep the connection alive through text/calls. Communities create rituals (like religion, clubs, companies) to build connection. Singing, campfires, group exercises. It must be in person connection. There are rhythms to the frequency of a baby’s sleep. Words are weasels, real connection is measured through how one physically touches another. Monkeys grooming each other - people have evolved, but touch is a major factor. How one touches another shows the extent of the feeling, beyond the spoken words. >> From a podcast / interview with the Dunbar himself.
9. Art of love depends on care (concern for the growth of what we love), responsibility (responding to the psychic needs of other person), respect (absence of exploitation, without domination, sign of my independence and respecting theirs) and knowledge (see the other person in his own terms, penetrating to the core, beyond outward signs). >> After picking up the book reference, Art of Loving by Eric Fromm.
10. Explore, Exploit, Expand - applied to career. Generalist in the beginning (explore), Specialist in the middle (exploit), Generalist in the end (expand).
11. Consensus as a problem - just because a group of people are saying something, don't have to agree with that. If I was in the class where 30 people who were paid to give a wrong answer and I am the test subject, would I give the right answer if I know it or fall in with the rest of the 30 people and tell the wrong answer? If someone is in pain, would I go to help or listen to an authority figure asking me not to?
12. “Granny hobbies” for digital detox - reading, cooking, gardening, knitting. >> Good metaphor to remember.
13. Delegation as handing over a monkey on our back to another person. When someone talks to you and hand over their worry to you, the monkey on their back jumps on to your back and you carry the worry further. When two people talk, be clear who carries the monkey after they finish talking. >> From the HBR article. I tend to carry a lot of such monkeys on my back and take ownership of monkeys in 1-1s where the monkey should stay on the back of the person who should be solving it and help them with options to do so than take it over.
14. Never avoid hard conversations. If something has a minor issue, repair it. Minor issues become major issues over time. >> Periodic reminder to change a bad habit, of letting small problems fester for too long, avoiding the difficulty of hard conversations, avoiding “plain speak”. Recurring theme this year of “being kind” vs “being nice”, radical candor.
15. History is edging. It feels like something is about to happen. Like everyone is holding their breath. Had it always been this way that the world is teetering on edge, without falling over a cliff? Maybe life is that way too. >> It gave name to some feeling in the back of my mind. Like whether we are lurching on the edge of a precipice always, but somehow not toppling over to the abyss, but due to constant vigil of some unknown heroes somehow avoiding total disaster.
16. Grit, rather than intelligence, is predictor of success of an entrepreneur.  >> Could be again an attribute to check for High Agency.
17. Build businesses around Enduring Human Needs. >> Like in the middle of the pandemic, someone saying his business is around the need for a group of people to be entertained, so it will come back. Having that conviction that something is on a solid ground must have helped in the middle of a gloom cycle.
18. Being ok to look stupid often, to actively have people think you are stupid for asking basic questions, not accepting obvious sounding answers that are wrong and pushing for nuanced, complex answers which are the truth. Part of being unconventional, not conforming, differentiating, avoiding groupthink. >> How often we are willing to be uncomfortable, to take the embarrassment from failure, determines the rate of learning. After reading this, I appreciate some people more, that they were courageous to be on the floor risking ridicule if they failed. Like the “man in the arena” quote.
19. Personalized custom apps, built for just us - like “home cooked meal”! >> For some time, especially now with Generative AI, I was thinking there could be a future where a TODO app is built for me alone, than me using the generic apps. Or a recipe app, or a music app, or a notes app. Beyond customization / personalization. Truly tailor made. Or I make something just for me (or for immediate family and friends) and use it. Maybe one day it will happen. “Craft software” like “craft beer” will become hip (like “organic handmade homegrown software”).
20. Eskimos have so many words for describing snow since it is their business to know. Similar could be the case of anyone studying and going deeper into any subject, collecting so much context and nuance.
21. What if there was a system which shows expectation from the top (top down feedback loop) and challenges from the bottom (bottom to top feedback loop). Top down sets the goals and bottoms up highlights the speed bumps. >> Maybe another recurring theme and rabbit hole that I am into this year.
22. Focus on Time to money in Product than Time to Market. 
23. B2B - if it is not true product team, it will create products like Oracle and SAP which no one loves. Some true product company will disrupt them. >> Reminder since we continue to build enterprise software that no one “loves’, we don’t even describe our products with such words.
24. Show simple first, gradually develop complexity. Each distinct analysis breaking down a large problem should have different visualization - else it will all fuse in audience's mind.  >> Another theme I am a sucker for, visual story telling techniques.
25. "Make a figure for the Generals" - tell the essentials of an analysis, research and status without complexity. Show how the project is succeeding - Generals should be able to look at figures and see if what we are doing is improving upon prior capabilities. >> Communicating something to executives is a topic I should write about in full, gathering all the tidbits I have gathered. Once someone told me “I am a Type A person, if you need me to listen to something, you need to shout” – while I didn’t like the hubris here, it is the stark reality that “busy” executives (“Generals”) don’t have time to listen. Useful metaphor that like the way of communicating something to children, there should be a style that should be learned, to communicate to Generals.
26. Story formats - Opening-Challenge-Action-Resolution; Newspapers (Lead – Development - Resolution - Lead is the main point, Development is the context), Action – Background -Development – Climax - Ending >> Something to learn more about and practice.
27. Along with books from each country, find unique people with not common taste from across the world, to be able to develop and maintain unique taste. Read older books, watch older movies etc.  >> To avoid falling into “monoculture”. Like the 100 greatest books of the 21st century list that NY Times curated recently – how many are from US and UK, are those the only ones that are great. Reminder to move beyond the US/UK hegemonies on culture, read translations, a resolution to read atleast one book from each country (translations). Same with movies and music.
28. Media follows a power law distribution (network effect). Content explosion has happened and there is InfiniteTV now. Few hits that are massive, with a long tail of content. Social signaling (people reducing opportunity cost by following friend's recommendations), recommendations (grouping tastes of similar people by algos) will amplify this. It will lead to few stars demanding premium, finding the hits from the long tail, role of luck in making it, initial conditions playing a major role in something becoming a hit or flop. In such a world it will be difficult to have unique taste and not to conform? >> “Taste” is another word of the year for me. How to develop and maintain my own taste, beyond following the algos. Hence what is happening in content is interesting to realize. 
29. Energy audit - look back at each hour. What were you doing - was it energy sapping or energy generating? Do this audit for every hour for 2 weeks and optimize the schedule (stop something, start something, continue something). >> Good reminder. Trying in crude ways, not successful yet.
30. Zone of incompetence - let someone else qualified do it. Zone of Competence - delegate. Zone of Excellence - good at it, but don't enjoy doing it - delegate. Zone of Genius - where we don't feel time passing while doing it, find more of it and do it. >> Constant struggle, yet to get there.