Unjustly

Why Post on Social Media

Just Mohit — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 04:30:41 +0000

It’s easy to get sucked into the “dopamine trap”, and start taking your social media presence as a measure of your worth. It is important to remember, however, that the value your work brings cannot be ascertained by the likes & comments of folks with no knowledge of what you say.

If that’s true, you may ask, why should people put their work out on social media (LinkedIn, insta, Facebook, blogs, etc etc)? Well, for one, it creates awareness. While becoming an influencer isn’t a worthwhile goal for me personally, keeping my thoughts to myself doesn’t help either.

Secondly, it leads to dialogue & discovery. And that helps improve your thinking. Sometimes, the most value you get from your own work, is from the polite disagreement of knowledgeable peers.

Thirdly, (very occasionally), what you write might reach someone who needs to hear that particular idea or thought, at that particular time.

Keep thinking, keep working, keep writing.

#wednesdaymusings #musings #writing #socialmedia #dialogue

My reading journey

Just Mohit — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 13:27:08 +0000

I’ve been a reader, ever since i can remember.

I grew up in really small towns, where the only modes of entertainment were sports with friends, and books. There was no television, since the town was surrounded by hills that prevented television reception. And with very few people, the sports you could play were limited as well. So, i read.

Thankfully, my parents encouraged this. My father did a deal with me when i was barely 5 years old: every test i got full marks in, would get me a book. By the age of 10, i had more books than all my friends combined
And our school principal (bless your soul Fr. Castelino) built a school library, despite being told he should be spending his money on a million other things.

I kept reading everything i could lay my hands on, through college, and beyond. And for years i was surprised to meet people who didn’t read. I had learnt not to judge, or grudge, people their choices but i found it amazing that someone might not find a book or two they could somehow relate to. The written word, after all, is proof of human civilization.

I came across a new genre of books when i went to study management. Thick tomes that proposed to explore & lay bare the mysteries of “business management”. And i dove right in. Through those 2 years, as so many of my friends spent their time in classes & projects, i read – about 170 books.
(To be honest, i now think i was wrong in doing so. The few classes i did attend were interesting, the professors curious & aware, and the subjects complex enough to demand debate & discussion.)

For years, management books were a staple diet of mine. And then, about 10 years ago, i stopped reading them. I now think most business management books get unduly prescriptive about issues & problems that are far more complex than are made out to be. They also draw conclusions from data sets that aren’t large enough, long enough, or replicable exactly. Of course, my own rebellious streak also comes in the way of accepting such prescriptive answers.

This is not (i repeat, not) to put down the whole genre. Of late, writers like Adam Grant, Atul Gawande, Hans Rosling, Seth Godin, and others have been doing great work. A number of other writers and thinkers have been looking into personal productivity, into fleshing out your personal paths in alignment with values and psychology. However, I think most of these are not about “management”, but about personal effectiveness.

I do not want to be prescriptive about this. It is a personal journey that everyone has to undertake, and discover their own path, discover what works for them, themselves. There are lots of great books out there, in every genre, that will help you discover things that work for you. I still remain open to suggestions on what to read, but today I think poetry & literature teach you more – far more. And so I increasingly look to fiction to derive my lessons about life, about self, about managing.

Regardless, whatever you decide to read, please read with an open mind. Look to apply what you learn, discard what doesn’t work, and to pass on your learnings to others.

#management #business #books #journey #life #wednesday #reading

Dealing with Tsundoku

Just Mohit — Sun, 10 Jul 2022 13:21:21 +0000

Oliver Burkeman talks about the “information overload problem“

To return to information overload: this means treating your “to read” pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it). After all, you presumably don’t feel overwhelmed by all the unread books in the British Library – and not because there aren’t an overwhelming number of them, but because it never occurred to you that it might be your job to get through them all.

Wealth destruction: a primer

Just Mohit — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 02:50:40 +0000

(When we say wealth has been wiped out, people ask…) Where did all that wealth go?

The short answer is: It didn’t “go” anywhere. It vanished. It stopped existing. That’s not a natural or intuitive idea — how can wealth just disappear? — so this post is an explainer of how that works. And as we’ll see, this has implications for policy, for how we think about inequality, and for how we plan our own financial futures…

Ultimately, wealth isn’t a physical property of the Universe itself. It’s just how much humans value stuff like stocks, crypto, bonds, houses, or gold…

maybe you’re starting to wonder if… the numbers we use for wealth are simply fake.
Well, in fact, it is a little bit fake. Not entirely, but a little bit. The reason is something called price impact…

“But if price impact means the wealth numbers are somewhat fake, then why don’t we calculate wealth as the amount of cash you COULD get out if you DID sell?”
Well, the answer is: Because we can’t. We just don’t know. The only way to find out price impact is to actually sell. So we can’t really calculate how much cash people could get from selling all their stock or all their Bitcoin, because we don’t actually have any way of knowing how much it is in advance…

Work life balance

Just Mohit — Sat, 18 Jun 2022 15:12:11 +0000

This poem sets the tone for a really wonderful link-essay on work life balance, by Austin Kleon

Recognizing Bullshit

Just Mohit — Sat, 18 Jun 2022 15:09:03 +0000

A guide to recognizing different types of Bullshit, by Morgan Housel

Predicting things that are impossible to know.
Presenting an upside reward with no regard to the associated cost.
Unnecessary complexity.
Ignorance of your own luck or others’ misfortune.

Patrick Collison interview

Just Mohit — Tue, 24 May 2022 15:59:09 +0000

This is such a wonderful, free ranging interview. Patrick Collison shares his worldview, his mental models, and talks about how his thinking has changed over the years. While the entire interview is worth reading, I’m sharing below, some points that leaped out at me;

1. (Talking about the qualities he looks for in the people he hires):
I think the three that really stand out to me are this rigor and clarity of thought, this hunger, appetite, willfulness, determination, and this … warmth and desire to make people around them better off.

2. (On decision making):
The…thing is to not treat all decisions uniformly. I think the most obvious axes to break them down on are degree of reversibility and magnitude. Things with low reversibility and great impact and magnitude, those ones you do want to really deliberate over and try to get right.

3. (On choosing books):
there’s a set of great books that are really worth reading, and there’s a subset of those books that are really enjoyable to read. And the intersection of really worth reading and really enjoyable to read, is actually still more books than you can read in a lifetime…
I think reading should be treated as a more active process. You should skim, you should skip, you should backtrack, you should discard and potentially return. You’re not subject to the book; you’re not a passive consumer. The book is there for you, you bought it, it’s yours. And jump back and forwards, tear it in half if you want, annotate it wildly, use it.

4. I think just the other thing worth pointing out is the line from Basho, the Japanese poet, that you shouldn’t follow the people you most admire but you should follow what they admired. And I try to do that. I try to figure out, for the people who seem to be doing really great work or to have really interesting ideas, or just who I admire in whatever regard, I try to get, how do they get to who and what they are? What influenced them or what’s upstream? And often it’s quite obscure, but I try to disentangle that.

Patrick Collison: Earning Your Stripes [The Knowledge Project Ep. #32]

Top Idea

Just Mohit — Fri, 20 May 2022 14:07:50 +0000

I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That’s the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they’re allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it’s a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind…

You can’t directly control where your thoughts drift. If you’re controlling them, they’re not drifting. But you can control them indirectly, by controlling what situations you let yourself get into. That has been the lesson for me: be careful what you let become critical to you. Try to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones you want to think about…

I suspect a lot of people aren’t sure what’s the top idea in their mind at any given time. I’m often mistaken about it. I tend to think it’s the idea I’d want to be the top one, rather than the one that is. But it’s easy to figure this out: just take a shower. What topic do your thoughts keep returning to? If it’s not what you want to be thinking about, you may want to change something.

What an amazing & timely essay by Paul Graham

Power of Regret

Just Mohit — Fri, 13 May 2022 12:20:33 +0000

//(The 4 common regrets are):
If only I’d done the work. If only I’d taken the chance. If only I’d done the right thing. If only I’d reached out.
…when people tell you what they regret the most, they’re also telling you what they value the most. These four core regrets offer a photographic negative of the good life.

(A life well lived would consist of):
A decent foundation – enough stability so that life is not precarious. Boldness – a chance to learn and grow and do something meaningful during the vanishingly short time we’re alive. Morality – being good and decent and just. Connection – having people we love and who love us.

And that…is where you should point your precious attention. Everything else? Ignore it.//

Dan Pink talks about the power of regret in this commencement lecture.

Before Accepting an Invitation

Just Mohit — Sun, 01 May 2022 07:38:47 +0000

Interesting framework regarding invitations:

Anytime anyone invites you to do anything, ask yourself this question before you accept: Would I do it tomorrow?
That’s it—those five words. Not: Would I do it on some theoretical day in the future? This is the crucial question: Would I upend whatever I am doing tomorrow so that I can go there and do that?…
When you get the invitation, pay no attention at all to its far-flung date: Move it mentally to tomorrow.
Tomorrow makes decisions simple.