Excellent list of traits, as relevant to leading a good life as they are to successful investing. Humility, Integrity, Tenacity, Awareness & Adaptability.
Quantam mechanics of the mind: The nature of one’s thoughts change as one starts observing them with awareness.
Until eventually there are no thoughts and you bask in the silence and stillness.
Be chronically curious!
A perpetual learning machine!
“Instead of focusing on the ultimate outcome, focus on the next move. There is always something you can do today to move a little closer, to put yourself in a better position.”
A Tiny Thought in the farnamstreet newsletter
If you don’t ask the answer is (almost) always no!
Every time I feel a hint of arrogance or dissatisfaction of some kind, I revisit this iconic speech that best conveys the insignificance of our existence and pettiness of our EGO.
The Pale Blue 🔵 by Carl Sagan - A mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam, the only 🏠 we’ve ever known
Everyone makes mistakes, some are just better at hiding it than others.
A lot of people don’t realize how much work goes into making some thing look like it was no work at all.
— Scott Hanselman
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom
— Socrates
Happy Independence Day - Letter to Motherland 🇮🇳
My eternal Mother,
Where do I begin and what do I say? Even as this humble human heart throbs in gratitude for the countless benedictions benevolently bestowed at your compassionate feet, many a doubt linger at the far corners of this questioning mind. After I spent over 30 years in the warm and tender embrace of your nurturing soil at last I manage to face my fears and take the plunge.
In writing to you I endeavor to understand the intricacies of my own existence while your infinite wisdom dispels the ignorance of my insignificance in the grand scheme of things. No words would suffice to express how greatly I feel about you. However, I feel morally obligated to write to you now more than ever as you are going through the mostly incredible time of your everlasting life.
I want to know mother how you came to be a true paradise of paradox. In you all the polar opposites seem to co-exist. It never seizes to amaze me, why would you nurture selfless souls who live for the sake of others while allowing corrupt crooks to thrive? Even as I attribute it to motherly compassion, I am confounded by the disparity of wealth distribution in your very home. How can you let a few loathe in richness while the many suffer their poverty in silence?
How is it that you make allowance for the hopes of hardworking heroes dashed while the dreams of the fortunate few are fulfilled? I can understand you giving birth to sons and daughters who further the frontiers of music and mathematics, but why bother to nurture terrorists and tyrants? How then do you ensure justice is served when injustice is rampant? On the one hand we as a nation strive for greatness while on the other we reek of meekness help me make sense of these confluence of conflicts.
Are you a but a mere fleeting mirage or an eternal unchanging reality? Am I to feel elated when the greatness of your glory soars over Himalayan heights or devastated when the character of my nation sinks into oceanic depths? It is incredibly gratifying to see you clad in pristine rivers and bejeweled with magnificent mountains. But then, I fail to reconcile all the impurities your children add-on to your clothes all the dents they cause into your ornaments. Is it greed or survival? Is it ignorance or innocence?
For all the questions that confound me, I would not have it any other way. For you are in me as much as I am in you; a culmination of contradictions and a miracle of creation. I am grateful to you for the gift of love, for the spark of life and for the light of knowledge that was vouchsafed upon me by the sole virtue of being born to you. Thank you for giving this opportunity to write to you and seek your blessings. Hope to hear from you sometime in the eternity.
Yours Forever,
Loving Child
If you feel like complaining about how things are, always remember they could have been worse. Stay grateful🙏👍
Today I learnt that the Federal Reserve Bank (commonly known as a the Fed) is neither federal, nor holds any reserves and is definitely not bank you and I can visit to make normal financial transactions - www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthef…
How Ogilvy made Dove great. And how his disciples made Dove great again 50 years later. Plus, how to do the same with Double Diamond: fronterablog.com/double-di…
People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves. ~Seth Godin
Elon Musk did start a company to pursue his philosophical quest to understand the universe after all.
Is this his answer to OpenAI becoming the exact opposite of the principles on which it was founded, Open source and non-profit to closed source and for profit)?
Product Sense Case Study - Whitehat Jr.
Problem Statement
For Whitehat Jr how do you improve the connect between the candidates and tutors after the first call?
Comprehend the Situation
What : The conversion rate after the demo call is below satisfactory levels
Why:
The children are not happy with the tutor The parents are not happy with the tutor
Clarifying questions:
What’s the duration of the demo?
Whats the structure?
Is there interaction?
Is there an internet connectivity issue?
What does the tutor focus on merely showcasing knowledge or building rapport?
Identify the Customer
Customer: Parents of young children - since they are ones paying.
Note: The purist in me wants to say the child/learner is the customer, I would like to take a different path and want the reviewers to expound on the merits or lack thereof of this approach of identifying the customer. *
Also, in principle should the customer be the one using the product or the one paying for it(when they are different)? Example in the case of B2B product etc?
Report the CX’s Needs
Assumption: the parent would assess whether the below objectives are met in the demo session by the tutor as far as the child is concerned.
- Is well behaved - polite and patient
- Knowledgeable and able to transfer that knowledge according to age, inclination and aptitude of the child
- Keeps the child engaged - through interaction
- Enjoys and has fun interacting with the kids and vice-versa
- Ensures learning is happening - through retention and recall
Cut, through prioritization
First priority,
Enjoys and has fun interacting with the kids and vice-versa
If the child is having fun,
It will stay engaged and it will learn. It will continue to do so for long periods of time consistently. Also, it becomes a pull where the child learns without any sense of conscious effort and is therefore likely to want to learn more and remain interested much longer than otherwise.
Next thing would be,
Is well behaved - polite and patient
The third,
Knowledgeable and able to transfer that knowledge according to age, inclination and aptitude of the child
List All Solutions
- Educate the tutors about learning pedagogy and on nuances of interacting with and educating kids
- Seek feedback from those who didn’t sing-up on why they did not with open ended questions
- Improve on those and iterate
- Keep an initial rapport building or get to know your customer session where the child and parent can share what they want and tailor the demo accordingly
- Work towards making the tutors more kind and compassionate human beings and distill the wisdom on why its good,
- Incentivize the tutors for genuine interaction and not merely for closing the sale. Provide them autonomy and flexibility on how they want to do it and for how long. Encourage them to be collaborators and not competitors by sharing their learning and experience from interacting with other prospects.
- Improve the quality of leads and prospects, thereby investing effort in client that are more likely to convert
- Allow tutors to be open and honest about the limitations of their platform and service - parents are able to see through promises that are too good to be true
- Provide time for parents to voice their concerns or queries and educate tutors on how to address them
Evaluating trade-offs
Given enough resources (funding, time) and pain tolerance - ability to withstand temporary setback
I would recommend solution 6.
Incentivize the tutors for genuine interaction and not merely for closing the sale. Provide them autonomy and flexibility on how they want to do it and for how long. Encourage them to be collaborators and not competitors by sharing their learning and experience from interacting with other prospects.
Summarize your recommendation
With the core vision of transforming the online education landscape and not just making a quick buck, one can see a much deeper concern that can be addressed using the above problem statement as a starting point.
Which is to enjoy the process of learning and being able to have fun while doing it.
With that in mind, I would recommend incentivizing the tutors (possibly through equity ownership or ESOP) to build relationships and not approach the process with a transactional mindset
The more random a situation, the more certain we tend to be of the outcome.
~ Unknown