koolhead17
My friend Vinay asked me to read Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life. Ikigai is a way of living, practiced in Japan.
These are 10 core principles of Ikigai.
Halfway through delivering happiness, a book was written by Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos. He talks about how business, a startup is similar to playing poker.
I found these pages worth sharing.
We humans dislike changes. We like automaticity more. It keeps us sane and drains less of our cognitive energy. You will relate to this in case you are working hard on losing weight or quitting sugar. Gaining new skills is equally tiring.
Our sacred text reminds us change is permanent. I find it confusing.
A few find meaning in their life early on. They are lucky. These people devote an entire life to the cause. It can be serving the destitute, nation or ensuring the family gets everything at all cost. A lot many of us die looking for that True North, one thing to cling on for entire life.
At the same time, a lot many of us live like an insect, slave to our desires and quest for recognition. Many others who die living in their virtual world. Some fall to propaganda or various “ism”.
Finding your ultimate calling will make you more humble and grounded towards self and the world.
This moment is the reality, this minute is the reality. We are dying every minute. Can we celebrate these dying moments? The choice is ours, either celebrate it or stay miserable.
We are all sold on the idea of perfection. We want the perfect partner, job, vacation, and other worldly things.”
Our urge for this perfectionism has a side effect. We stop caring and celebrating. Our life journey is not a one-legged mammoth.
Instead of living life while aspiring to make it perfect while living, enjoying what we have now makes it more fruitful.
Working with a big team scares me. I am working under many silos. The wall of hierarchy and interacting with many personas. It is like many worlds working inside and each being clueless.
I like Jeff Bezos philosophy of 6 member team, fitting on a big size Pizza. Does it still hold for Amazon?
The inefficiency of a big team is more about the communication gap and ego of the gatekeepers. Will automation solve this? Only time will tell, as technology is evolving.
Burnout is real. It can happen to any team size. It is for a leader to keep an eye on the team. Apart from a great working environment, transparency, a leader has to be aware of setting up an honest expectation.
A leader has to nudge, encourage and empower every single team member. The radical belief in the organization bigger cause keeps a great team together.
Your engineer will not tell you about being in burn out, you have to be with them enough to realize it.
The rule of successful product development is simple: listen to your users.
But are all users equal? I would strongly say NO. My journey so far has taught me about 3 categories of users.
Noisy: They will create all the noise, what features are lacking in the product. They will show a superficial association with your product.
After this: this kind of users will play with you on the loop. Add X features, I will start using your product. After X gets implemented they will ask you for Y. And they will never put your product in their daily process.
Believers: They are the most rare breed. They will use your product even when it’s broken. They will give valuable feedback, feature requests because it is coming from their everyday pain.
If you are starting to build a product from scratch and end up finding believers, you are on a rocket ship and destined to succeed.
And if you are unlucky you will never find product-market fit because after this and noisy users will force you to change goal post regularly.
We are fighting our own little battle. It is closer to our heart and of much importance. It is difficult for others to understand and relate to it. We don’t have to waste our time explaining it to others.
A day wage labor values every penny he earns because of his need. A wealthy businessman is more worried about his brand. A stockbroker’s life is dependent on the market fluctuations.
Keeping our battle closer to our heart saves us from unwanted advice, noise.