koolhead17
We write many stories throughout our life. Some we publish while most get buried with us. These stories are often our encounters with situations, people and adversity.
It is on us as an author to decide what to do with these beautiful stories, carry to the grave like a treasurer, or become an author and publish books.
The last category is of those who live by these in a good or bad way. The encounters of the past haunt them for life or cherish them.
What is your story?
Self-help books appear to be the hot sell. From Amazon’s listing to bookstores, they are stacked everywhere.
Have we turned dumber or have become less confident than our elders? Why is the business of self-help getting so much air?
I fell that fear of missing out and belonging to society has a lot to do with it.
The irony of 2019 is that any garbage can be packed and sold as a book.
Socrates must be confused. My discourse for mare mortals was about acquiring self-knowledge, not becoming slave self-help books.
Read good calorie, bad calorie last week. This book cites the effect of excessive processed carbohydrate intake in our diet. The author has gone way forward with the research papers, experiments attributing all major modern-day diseases to carbohydrate consumption. We have victimized fat to a great length.
I keep hearing from friends about moderation, which seems too difficult to implement in the era of food deserts. Apart from the food being available on the click of a button. The quality control from consuming outside food is highly debatable.
I was with a few friends last evening, both running their startups. It was great listening to them. Added the list along with.
A lot many of these resembles with Pankaj Mishra’s journey of running Factordaily
I have come to that stage of my life where I am least interested in making new connections. I feel like I am completely exhausted with my real-life friend’s list.
I have a small list of friends and I am happy with them around me. I am finding everything else as a distraction.
I am also fed up with the wise men preaching on various subjects from entrepreneurship, life, career or relationship.
What is the point of taking advice, taking counseling in your affairs from someone who has no skin in your GAME?
At times I feel I have entered into an age of getting a quick fix for everything which is not sustainable in the longer run.
Your situation, startup, life is yours and wasting time listening to some random podcast or coffee meet will only create confusion.
One has to own his/her shit, read, learn, re-learn and engage people who have skin in the game, people who are part of the business: customers, investors, and advisors everything else is a distraction.
I finished reading The Anarchy this week. I enjoyed reading it and gaining more knowledge about Indian history I also felt the author being a Mughal apologist.
Throughout the book, the author mentions the atrocities committed by the British, the Jats, the Marathas, the Rohillas et all.
I got to know about the powerful Marathas and Mysore, Tipu who were the only formidable forces fighting against the East India Company, the reason being their close alliance with the French.
East India Company was an enterprise with a monopoly, it was no less than the modern-day Google, Facebook according to the author.
How amazing India would have been without British Invasion? Much richer with our culture and economy both. Awadh, Bengal and all provinces would have existed with its own culture like Europe? Or we would have fought battles among others?
Product development should focus more on the incentives for their stakeholders. Don’t create a feature-rich product but take end-users requirements to its core.
Most products have more than one personas, understanding it and working towards eliminating the pain would be a good start.
People don’t buy a product because it’s sexy, but because they have pain and your product solves it. An added layer of incentive creates a good moat and delights your user.
Getting lost in competitors, feature set parity and forgetting about user’s pain and incentives can kill any product in no time.
I was going through Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics“. I am still half way though.
There is a good lecture on the same by Adam Rosenfeld which I am also watching.
Along with Stoics, looks like Aristotle is going to be the Philosopher I am going to spend good part of my life reading and learning from.
Added a doodle this morning on top of some note.
Some meetings turn out bad, meeting where the other person acts inappropriately because they could afford to do that.
How hollow are we with this external layer over ourselves: power, position, designation? Do we not know that these are all temporary?
Don’t be prideful with any excellence that is not your own. If a horse should be prideful and say, ” I am handsome,” it would be supportable. But when you are prideful, and say, ” I have a handsome horse,” know that you are proud of what is, in fact, only the good of the horse. What, then, is your own? Only your reaction to the appearances of things. Thus, when you behave conformably to nature in reaction to how things appear, you will be proud of reason; for you will take pride in some good of your own.
The Enchiridion, Epictetus
I have spent the last two years with some reading and taking care of myself. I wish I could have done this much earlier.
One thing I have learned all this time is that our brain by default is a pessimist. Reading Philosophy made me realize the meaning of self-knowledge, observing my thoughts.
Since our birth, we have been conditioned and told about what we cannot do, which is not possible. Very few kind people guided us to achieve the impossible. Our brain took it as default for everything. As a grown-up, we are paying price for it.
Do not let the default control our thoughts, guide our actions and make us more miserable.
Keep your monkey mind in control. We need to have positive affirmations, goals and visualize our success. Our life is as we see it. If we are not happy, confident within, how do we expect others to see the opposite in us?