Overthinking

Overthinking is a cause of depression. We end up imagining situations which have not happened. The fear of its happening itself makes us miserable.

Our brain is hard-wired to think negatives. That came with our Homo Sapiens DNA. Always in fight and flight mode.

The only thing we can do to avoid getting stressed and stop overthinking is to be in the present moment.

How to be miserable?

Charlie Munger in his commencement speech on June 13, 1986, to the Harvard School, talks about four ways to become miserable.

Munger continued from where Johnny Carson had spoken. Carson’s prescriptions for sure misery included:

1) Ingesting chemicals in an effort to alter mood or perception

2) Envy

3) Resentment

On top of this, Charlie Munger added 4 more :

  1. Be unreliable
  2. Learn everything you possibly can from your own personal experience
  3. Give up easily, after failing a few times
  4. Don’t apply inversion

Complete speech can be found here

Isolation

How many of us are living in isolation? We resort to social media applications, news feeds. Do we feel we don’t belong in this real world where we would interact humanly?

Why do we have to take shelter to anonymous platforms to share our pain, happiness?

Is it because with the advancement of technology has affected our relationship in a different manner?

Are we more comfortable sharing and caring for remote strangers than the ones we grew up playing gully cricket/football with? Or is it we are all displaced from our native and we don’t have those friends anymore at walking distance?

Civilization has come far, we are living a better life yet more isolated and glued inside the gadgets?

How many decades are we away from the singularity?

Self herding

How many times did you end up buying a bigger or newer costlier coffee at your favorite roaster?

You will know only if you check your expenditure on coffee.

You repeated your own behavior and ended up drinking costlier coffee in bigger mugs.

But what about the sample coffee barista offered you?

Well congratulations, you fell for self-herding. It is a common sales trick applied by coffee/candy/ice cream shops.

Listening

Listening is one of the most important virtue for us. A good listener gets more love, respect, and recognition. This art can help us in being focused in all situations.

  • A good founder grasps more from a board meeting.
  • To me a great salesperson, you have to be a great listener.
  • Not listening to your partner instead watching IPL, Football: try doing it. 🙂

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
— Epictetus

Lazy CEO

Constrain Driven

  • Spends all the time equally on all the aspects of departments of their company.
  • Gives the most important time on things which requires attention.
  • Is visionary, is aware what could go wrong and take steps to fix it.
  • Hires a set of lieutenants and delegates most of their tasks.
Lazy CEO

A Learner

  • He knows nothing
  • Always learning
  • Curious

An Architect

  • Strives for improvement.
  • Planner, thinker, and a strategist.
  • Working towards growth
  • Striving for a multiplier effect

A Coach

  • Always call away for advice
  • Always there to support in all the possible fronts.

An Engineer

  • Establishes a well-defined process.
  • Works on best and worst scenarios. On a page with the team on the roadmap.

A Player

  • Working as an Orchestrator
  • Leading from the front is all the situations wherever needed

In short:

  • CEO should ask what is fucked up and how quickly we can fix it?
  • Always keep learning AKL mode on
  • Goal driven and takes entire firm along

The dilemma and pain

  • Burn outs
  • Missing timelines
  • Unhappy customers
  • Lack of momentum
  • The firing episode
  • Less motivated employees

Support System

  • Set of good friends and mentors
  • Good habits: exercise, sleep, food
  • Rational thinking

I remember reading this book title: Great Ceos Are Lazy and the note was lying somewhere in my notebook.

Summer vacation & Grandma

It is the time of year again when I start missing my Dadi(grandma). I see kids on the street playing gully cricket, shouting, laughing and crying.

My summer vacation was a different story altogether, my village is a few kilometers from where I lived with my parents. Papa will drop us to our village and then all the fun will begin. Spending 60 days with my Dadi.

Her day will start with playing All India Radio, ram charit manas path. That would be my alarm yeps. By the time I am up she would be done with her daily chores and breakfast with tea will be served.

After that, I will be on my own: roaming to the fields with my cousins, taking bath in boarding pumps watering paddy fields to stealing mangoes and lychees from the orchids and sometimes getting cursed by maalis.

It was living a life like a king on my own rules and getting pampered by dadi. She will make the best parathas (my mom agrees) with fired Aloo (potato).

I have not met anyone so active in her 60’s, she was always up for challenges and explorations. I would demand something and It will be presented. We had no electricity, it was an era of lantern/kerosene lamps.

She is no more, passed away many years back. I was 9/10 years old then. I will update this post with more remembrance.