Rutu’s Book Summaries

Willpower

2020-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

In this book Roy Baumeister and John Tierney talk about Willpower, why it is important, how successful people have implemented the power of willpower in their own lives, and how to build and practice our own muscle of “willpower”.

Success has attributed to 2 qualities: intelligence and self control. Researchers have not been able to permanently increase intelligence, but they have discovered how to improve self-control.

Most major problems center in self control - e.g. compulsive spending, impulsive violence, unhealthy diet etc.

People spend about a quarter of their waking hours resisting desires - at least 4 hours per day. And that doesn’t include the instances in which willpower is exercised.

Every successful person has the quality of self-control, but it is rarely ever mentioned as a reason for success (It is almost always mentioned as the reason for failure).

In this book Baumeister and Tierney talk about how people who have mastered self control are more successful, in all aspects of their life as compared to their counterparts.

Ultimately self-control lets you relax because it removes stress and enables you to conserve willpower for the important challenges.

Is willpower more than a metaphor?

“Ego Depletion” - Baumeister’s term for describing people’s diminished capacity to regulate their thoughts, feelings and actions.

When the brain was wired up with an EEG to monitor the anterior cingulate cortex (or the conflict monitoring system or error detection system), it was discovered that people who act against what they actually feel, face ego depletion and are not able to do subsequent tasks correctly. E.g. 50% of the people were showed a sad movie but were asked to suppress their emotions. These people went on to not being able to do unrelated tasks properly after the movie, compared to their counterparts who did not go through ego-depletion.

Studying thousands of people inside and outside a laboratory, experiments consistently demonstrated:

you have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it
you use the same stock of willpower for all manner of tasks

We can divide the uses of willpower into 4 broad categories:

control of thoughts: earworms such as a song stuck in your head, to ways in which we deceive ourselves (e.g. Tiger woods convinced himself that monogamy didn’t apply to him, bankers convinced themselves that there was no problem issuing loans to people having no income and no assetts)
control of emotions: controlling feeings - e.g. trying to escape bad moods
impulse control: the ability to resist temptations like alcohol, tobacco, Cinnabons and cocktail waitresses
performance control: Focusing your energy on the task at hand

If you are trying to make a big change in your life that requires willpower - make sure to focus only on that change. The limited willpower that one has is used for all aspects of their life - no matter how unrelated. e.g. quitting alcohol, saying good things about bullys - both share the same willpower resources.

Willpower isn’t just a metaphor. There is power driving this virtue.

Where does the power in Willpower come from?

There is a very strong correlation between glucose in the body and willpower. The more glucose that is converted from the bloodstream and pumped into the brain, the higher is the person’s willpower. No glucose, no willpower.

When people have more demands for self-control in their daily life, their hunger for sweets increases. Not hunger for food in general, but the hunger for sweets.

Don’t try to skimp on calories when working on serious problems (more serious than being overweight). Sugar can be used effectively to boost your self control right before a brief challenge - like a math test.

To get your glucose, go for the “slow burn” - i.e. food that takes a while to digest (low glycemic index) and can sustain you got a longer time.

Sleep also affect how effective the body is to create glucose. Which is why having a good nights sleep is beneficial for willpower.

The Hard Thing about Hard Things

2020-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

This book is one of the first books to read as an entrepreneur. Ben Horowitz candidly talks about the struggles, and hard things about starting, running and growing companies. Here is a Techcrunch article reviewing this book.

The beginning

A bully told Ben to ask another kid for his wagon, and if the other kid refuses, to spit in his face and call him profanity. Ben reluctantly went to the other kid and politely asked to play with his wagon, and the other kid obliged. This is how Ben met his best friend - by doing something uncomfortable. It taught him not to judge things by their surfaces, and that there are no shortcuts to anything.

Some tidbits of learning:

The most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it is better to ignore the other thirty who say “no”
The best things about startups is that you only ever experience two emotions - euphoria and terror, and the lack of sleep enhances them both.
You need 2 kinds of friends in your life - the one you can call when things are great and who can be happy for you, and one you can call when things are going bad and who is your lifeline in that bad time.
Have mentors who have gone though some horrible and devastating circumstances so that they can advice you how to avoid them
Startup CEOs should not play the odds. WHen you are building a company, you must believe that there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it.

When things fall apart

The secret to being a successful CEO is the ability to focus and make the best move when there are no good moves.

Struggle in your company is not failure - but it often causes failure - if you are not strong enough to endure it.

How to deal with struggle:

Divide and conquer - seek help, don’t put it all on your own shoulders
Don’t underestimate the complexity - this is chess not checkers.
Play long enough and you might get lucky
Do not take it personally

CEOs should tell it like it is

ignoring the negatives does not pain a realistic picture and makes you appear less trustworthy
If there is a problem, it is better for the team to find a solution together, rather that the CEO to shelter the team from it

If you ever need to fire your employees, executives, or demote a friend - do it the right way.

When you are in a trouble, nobody really cares - not employees, customers, media or investors. Your time is best spent on figuring out a solution, thank worrying about what anyone thinks of you.

Take care of the people, the products and the profits - in that order

when hiring executives, hire for strength rather than lack of weakness.
If you are looking for a genius who might not be the best cultural fit, know what you are getting into, and hire them for the genius that they bring to the team
Being a good company doesn’t matter when things go well, but it can be the difference between life and death when things go wrong. Things always go wrong!
It is important to train your employees
- It improves productivity
- Sets expectations
- Improves quality and throughput
- Increases employee retention as they will strive hard to reach specific targets
- Best place to start is management and new employees

Good Product Managers	Bad Product Managers
Know the marker, product, product line and competition extremely well	Work with excuses - not enough funding, too much competition etc.
Crisply define the target and the “what”	Feel good about themselves when they figure out the “how”
Create collateral such as FAQs presentations	Complain about spending their time answering questions
Take written positions on important issues	Use verbal communication
Focus the team on revenue and customers	Focus the team on how many features the competitors are building
Decompose problems into segments	Combine all problems into one
Think about the story they want to be written in the press	Think about covering every feature and being technically accurate with the press
Articulate simply and clearly	Never explain the obvious
Disciplined execution of status reports	Don’t value discipline

Should you hire your friends employees?

probably not, if you don’t want to do the same to you

Issues with hiring big company executives:

Rhythm mismatch - exec is used to waiting for incoming communication rather than taking action
Skill-set mismatch - Large company execs are good at managing complex organizations, process improvement etc, which isn’t quite where a smaller organization skill requirement is.

These problems can be allayed by screening for mismatches early on and asking questions like:

what will you do in your first month on the job
how will your new job differ from your current job
why do you want to join a small company

Once a candidate is on board, aggressively integrate them in your company by doing the following:

force them to create and produce immediately
make sure they “get it”
make sure they connect with and initiate connections with everyone in the organization

While hiring executives:

Know what you want
Run a process the figures out the right match
Sometimes make the lonely decision that a CEO has to make

Like technical debt, be careful of management debt. Here are a few ways in which management debt can arise:

Putting two people together to manage
Overcompensation a key employee because they get another job offer
No performance management of employee feedback process

Concerning the growing concern

Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution, it just needs clarity. E.g. Ben’s employees were uncomfortable with the amount of profanity used at the company. He offered an explanation and suggestion to use it in the right context of work and urgency, and not to intimidate or sexually harass anymore. He compared it to the word “cupcake”. It is okay to say - “Those cupcakes you baked were delicious”, but it is not okay to say “Hey cupcakes, you look fine in those jeans. “

No one likes corporate politics, however it often unintentionally develops in an organization by sometimes incentivizing political behavior (unwittingly). E.g. if a senior executive requests a pay raise, with a competitive offer at hand, a CEO might offer them additional compensation to have them stay. Although it might seem innocent, this is strong incentive for political behavior as the CEO is rewarding behavior that has nothing to do with advancing the business. This is bad because:

others in the staff would like to ask for raises as well and this doesn’t seem performance driven but arbitrary
less aggressive members might be denied off cycle raises
people start optimizing over total compensation rather than growth of the product

How to minimize politics:

Hire people with the right kind of ambition and not necessarily political.
Build strict process for potentially political issues and do not deviate

Smart people are sometimes bad employees:

when they are disempowereed
when they are fundamentally a rebel
when they are immature/naive

Hiring senior people (older people - who have been there) to your startup is like taking performance enhancing drugs. If all goes well, you will achieve incredible new heights. If all goes wrong, you will start degenerating from the inside out.

It is challenging to hire senior employees:

they come with their own culture
they know how to work the system
you do not know the job as well as they do

It is important to have effective one on ones with employees. Here are a few questions:

if we could improve in any way, how could we do it?
what is the #1 problem with our organization? why?
what is not fun about working here?
who is really kicking ass in the company? who do you admire?
if you were me, what changes would you make?
what don’t you like about the product?
what is the biggest opportunity that we are missing out on?
what are we not doing that we should be doing?
are you happy working here?

When you are building a company and a product, you should have the following covered:

You should be at least 10 times better than the competition (one 2 or 3 times better)

You should take the market before anyone else does

If you are in the right direction with your product and market, company culture is the next important thing because it:

distinguishes you from the competitors
ensures and defines operating values
helps identify employees who fit with your mission

E.g. Amazon has frugality as their culture as they made employees use cheap doors from Home Depot as desks. E.g. Facebook has the motto of “Move fast and break things”, which make people stop and realize that they need to move fast and innovate, which might lead to breaking things - which is accepted.

How to lead even when you don’t know where you are going

As an entrepreneur one needs to stop focusing on the things you did wrong, or might do wrong.

The most difficult skill to learn as a CEO is the ability to manage their own psychology. Everything else is relatively straightforward as compared to keeping the mind in check.

As CEO - nothing prepares you to run a company (not being a manager, etc). You learn how to run a company, by running a company.

If CEOs were graded on a curve, the mean on the test would be 22 out of 100. This is because:

there is always broken stuff, and CEOs either take it too personally, or not personally enough
It is a lonely job being a CEO

Great CEOs face the pain, and the torture. Great CEos don’t quit.

There is no difference in how you feel when you are a hero or a coward. The fear is the same. The only difference is what you do with that fear that makes you either a hero, or a coward.

Great CEOs need to trust themselves and might have to go against the wishes of their team - for hiring, etc. for the benefit of the company.

There are 2 types of CEOs in the world:

ONES - managers who are happier setting the direction of the company
- most founding CEOs tend to be ones
- enjoy making decisions
- strategic minds and enjoy the 8 dimensional chess with their competitors
TWOS - those who enjoy making the company perform at the highest level
- enjoy the process of making the company run well
- often have difficulty with the strategic process itself

A good CEO needs to have the qualities of ONES and TWOS. Most organizations are run by ONES and have a team of TWOS.

What makes people follow a leader?

The ability to articulate the vision
The right kind of ambition
The ability to achieve the vision

There are 2 modes of being a CEO:

when facing an imminent threat - Wartime CEO
when it is business as usual - peacetime CEO It is an art to be able to be a wartime and peacetime CEO.

It takes a long time to develop CEO skillset, and it is hard to tell whether someone can develop it or not.

How to give feedback as a CEO:

be authentic
some from the right place (you want them to succeed)
don’t get personal
don’t embarrass anyone in front of their peers
feedback is not one size-fits all
be direct, but not mean
feedback is a dialog, not a monologue

First rule of entrepreneurship - there are no rules

In technology business you rarely know everything upfront, and letting people be creative can be the difference between magical and mediocre.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

2020-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

This book is a timeless classic by Dale Carnegie. In this book Carnegie goes into great depth about how to win hearts of everyone around you - employees, employers, students, mentors, friends, spouses, children etc. Carnegie provides countless examples and specific action to be taken to practice a lifestyle that involves winning friends and influencing people.

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

1. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain:

Criticism is futile and it makes the opposite person on the defensive and make them strive to justify themselves. Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain- and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

2. Give honest and sincere appreciation:

There is only one way to get anyone to do anything - by making them want to do it. There is no other way. Dr. John Dewey said that the deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be important”. This desire to be important makes poverty-stricken grocery clerk to study law books (Lincoln), or for Dickens to be inspired to write his immortal novels.

Charles Schwab was the first person in America to be paid a million dollars a year - because of his ability to deal with people. Schwab considered his greatest asset to be his ability to arouse enthusiasm among his people. The way he did it was with appreciation and encouragement.

All humans need a nourishing dose of self esteem. And providing others this nourishment of and nurturing in the form of kind words of appreciation is greatly accepted and appreciated.

Honest appreciation is not to be confused with flattery. Flattery is shallow, selfish and insincere.

True appreciation is honest, and is sincere, without expecting anything in return but a smile from the recipient and to make someones day better.

People crave the feeling of importance. Make someone feel important and they will think well of you. Diminish someone’s importance and they will resent you.

3. Arouse in the other person an eager want

Appeal to the other person’s interests. Virtually all people care more about what they want than what you want. You wouldn’t go fishing with cheesecake as a lure, since fish don’t like cheesecake. Go fishing with worms.

Keep asking yourself - “what is it that this person wants?” Everyone has something they can teach you, and you benefit by figuring out what that is. This belief leads to a genuine interest and appreciation for other people.

Angry people are often angry because they feel unheard. Once you sympathize with them, they will soften their anger substantially.

If there is one secret to success, it lies in the ability to get the other persons point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as your own.

The world is so full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking, that an unselfish individual who is willing to help others just to be helpful has a huge advantage and no competition.

Six Ways to Make People Like You

1. Become genuinely interested in other people

It is interesting to see that the dog is the only animal that does not “work” - unlike hen (lays eggs), cow (gives milk), canary (sings). Dogs make a living nothing but love.

You can make more friends in 2 months by being interested in other people that you can in 2 years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Everyone loves to be listened to and be appreciated. When we start with the recipient and their needs and wants, there is a much bigger and better chance for them to be amiable and warm and kind to you.

2. Smile

Smiling makes a good first impression. If you don’t feel like smiling, force yourself to smile (the action of smiling brings out the feeling of happiness and makes one want to smile more.)

Everyone in the world is looking for happiness, and the sure way to find it is by looking inwards and finding that in your heart.

3. A person loves their name.

A person’s name is the most important word in any language to them. Use it often and respect it. Remember a name and call it easily, and you have paid an effective compliment to the recipient (that their name is worth remembering), forget it or misspell it and you have placed yourself at a sharp disadvantage.

Andrew Carnegie remembered and honored many of his workers name, because of which there was never a strike or an issue under his leadership. All the employees felt loved and heard.

4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves

When people are heard, it helps dissolve anger and helps them feel heard. Many a times just listening to a disgruntled customer helps deescalate the situation.

Being a good listener is also a good way of becoming a good conversationalist. The more you listen to someone, the more they feel heard and important, and the more they enjoy your company.

5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests

If your recipient is interested in books, starting a conversation with that interest is a great ice-breaker, and establishes a wonderful common ground to setup a communication pattern/style.

6. Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely

Doing this will make people like you instantaneously. Everyone has admirable qualities, and finding those and highlighting them - without having an agenda to sell to them - but only focusing on making them happy - will bring you a long way in building a personal connection with them. This approach could be used with someone you have just met, or others who you have known for years.

Emerson said - “Every man that I meet is mu superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.” Finding that superior quality and highlighting it with honestly is a wonderful quality that makes people like you instantaneously.

How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes, but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will.

Buddha said - Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love. And a misunderstanding is never ended by argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s point of view.

2. Show respect to the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong”

Instead, approach with an open-minded view: “I may be wrong. I often am. And if I’m wrong, I want to change and be right. Let’s discuss the facts.” Praise the other person for a trait that will help resolve the argument - like their patience, open-mindedness, fairness, and receptivity to new facts.

Understand that the other person has a valid view of the situation. If you were born as them with their brain and undergoing their experiences, you would by definition feel the same way they do. Your job is to understand what led them to believe what they believe. Express sympathy for their situation. “You have the absolute right to be upset. If I were in your shoes, I would be too.”

To influence people to do things, praise and appreciation are more effective than orders. Don’t start by criticizing or complaining. This makes them defensive and rationalize their actions. Instead, praising them lowers their defenses, and they’ll be more receptive to your feedback.

It is important to be diplomatic and look at all points of view.

3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically

Humility and acceptance of being wrong is a huge virtue. It readily disarms the recipient and moves the conversation from “who is right”, to “how do we fix this”? This strategy readily brings people together, and often brings the opposite person to your rescue by dismissing your mistakes as - “not that big”, and “easy to fix”.

4. Begin in a friendly way

Starting any conversation with anger or antagonism will only make the recipient feel a similar level of anger. Beginning a tough conversation in a friendly way prompts the recipient to match your disposition, making it much more conducive to reach an agreement quickly.

5. Get the other person saying “yes” immediately

When talking to people, begin with topics and things that you know you agree on. Keep emphasizing that you both have the same goals, and the same destination, and just a slight difference in method to get to the goal.

Getting listeners to a “yes” quickly gets their psychological process moving in the affirmative direction.

It takes a lot of energy and effort to convert a “no” into a “yes” (even if it is about different topics). But starting with “yes” and agreeing on topics makes it easier to agree on other topics.

6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking

Listen first. Give your opponents a chance to talk through. Do NOT interrupt as they’re speaking.

Ask people where they feel the problems are. Ask for their opinions on how best to proceed. Ask lots of questions instead of stating commands.

When people are talking, they can often talk themselves out of the negatives, and focus on the positives.

Letting others talk always leads to a more favorable outcome as compared to forcing them to listen to you and follow your direction.

7. Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers

A manager of an automobile company asked his sales people what qualities they expected out of him, and wrote them out. He then asked them what qualities he ought to expect out of them - to which they readily listed qualities they should have. The manager made the sales people come up with their own goals for qualities they should possess - which made them want to achieve it because it was their own idea.

Similarly, an artist used to create sketches for buyers and was going through a rough spell with acceptance of his work. So he took some half finished sketches to the buyer and asked the buyer how they expected the sketches to be completed. With the buyers feedback the artist was able to make all the sketches to the buyers liking and get back into the grove of selling all of his sketches.

To get results, one needs to lead the recipient into thinking in your way, and then get them to reach your thought process/idea on their own accord.

It is very effective to execute an idea when the stakeholders believe that they have come to the ideas on their own accord.

8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s perspective

A woman was 6 weeks behind in her car payments, and received a call from the man who was handling her account. Accepting the worst, she thought of the situation from his perspective rather than her own, and admitted to being late on her payment - and possible a very challenging customer for the man - and thereby apologizing. Her empathy to his situation softened him a little and he worked with her to come up with a better way to deal with the car payments.

Looking at things from another persons perspective sheds new light on the situation - which is always a good position to be in when problem solving.

9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires

There is a magic phrase to stop arguments, eliminate ill feeling, create good will and make the other person listen attentively:

“I don’t blame you one bit for feeling the way you do. If I were you I would probably be feeling the same way.”

Using a phrase like this can soften the most antagonistic, defensive or cantankerous people.

Three-fourths of the people that one meets are hungry for sympathy, and if you give it to them - they will love you.

Responding to anger or insult with kindness is another way of accepting the opposite persons viewpoint and agreeing with it - a pretty effective way to shut down a bully.

10. Appeal to the nobler motives

J. Pierpont Morgan observed that a person usually has 2 reasons for doing a thing: One that sounds good, and a real one.

In order to change people - appeal to the nobler motive.

E.g. is someone is trying to break a lease (against the lease agreement), appeal to their nobler virtue of being a person of their word, about morals and ethics, as opposed to creating a scene and being angry about the possibility of legal action.

When you don’t know anything about someone, assume that they are sincere, honest and truthful and proceed conversations from that perspective.

11. Dramatize your ideas

This is the day of dramatization. Merely stating a truth isn’t enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship. The movies do it, TV does it, and you have to do it if you want attention.

“You are losing pennies to the dollar” he said as he dramatically dropped several pennies to the grown. The dramatization had a much bigger impact as compared to simply mentioning the statement.

12. Throw down a challenge

Charles Schwab said - “the way to get things done, is to simulate competition. Not in a sordid money-getting way, but in the desire to excel. “

Simulating the desire to excel enables create healthy competition to be better - than ourselves, than our competition.

Frederic Herzberg (behavioral scientist) discovered through his work that the most important motivator for people was the actual work - not benefits, not working conditions, and not fringe benefits - but the actual work.

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

A leaders job often includes changing your people’s attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation

It is always listen to unpleasant things after we have heard some praise about our good points. So if any feedback needs to be given, start with good points of the recipient, and how great they are, and then follow up with criticisms. People are more likely to make improvements when information is presented to them in a kind manner.

2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly

This is an effective way to criticize, and yet not be hated for it. Charles Schwab was passing through one of his steel mills when he noticed some of his employees smoking right below the “no smoking” sign. Instead of calling them out on this, he used an alternate technique. He gave each one of his employees a cigar and then said - “I’ll appreciate it, boys, if you smoke this on the outside.” He was able to get his message through and simultaneously made his employees feel important. It is hard not to love a person like that.

Using the word “but” after giving praise totally negates the praises, and makes them feel like empty statements. E.g. “We are proud of you for your grades this semester, but you could have gotten better grades if you worked harder in Algebra” vs “We are proud of you for your grades this semester, and you can get even better grades if you continue working this way.”

The second approach is way more effective than the first one.

3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person

It isn’t nearly as difficult to listen to your own faults, when the person telling you your faults is admitting that he too is far from impeccable.

E.g. Dale Carnegie needed to criticize his secretary for something, but before he said anything, he took a step back to consider the situation from her perspective and point of you and age, and realized that when he was that age, he made many more mistakes than her. He started off his criticisms by mentioning that fact, and then gently suggesting the request he had of her - it was readily accepted.

4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders

Asking questions makes the order more palatable, and often simulates the creativity of the persons whom you ask. People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued.

E.g. “what do you think of this?”, “Do you think this would work?”

It might be more time consuming in the short term, but much more effective in the long term.

5. Let the other person save face

We bulldoze over the feelings of others, getting our own way, finding faults, issuing threats, criticizing a child or an employee in front of others, without even considering the hurt to the other persons pride.

A Fresh aviation pioneer once said = “I have no right to do or say anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime. “

6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise”

When you praise someone, instead of finding faults, people start capitalizing on their praise and improving what they are already good at. People appreciate it when they are called out on their positive qualities.

7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to

If you want to improve a person in a certain respect, act as though that particular trait were already one of this or her outstanding characteristics.

E.g. You are a phenomenal mechanic, and you have done great work in the past few years. Off late things are not the same way, and maybe we can come up with a solution for it?

Making the recipient realize their own qualities helps them build their own self esteem and set up a target for them to reach - all by their own initiative.

8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct

It is way easier to climb a molehill instead of a mountain. If the fault is describe as the magnitude of a molehill, instead of a mountain, a person is more likely to readily work on it to fix it.

9. Make the other person happy about doing the things you suggest

E.g. if you cannot do a speaking engagement, suggest alternatives who are more likely to accept. It gives the recipient the chance to focus on next steps rather than being disappointed about your refusal.

Think about what the other person wants, and try to help the best you can to mitigate their own problems and satisfy their wants - while you make your suggestions.

Start with Why

2020-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

This book is by Simon Sinek. In this book Sinek talks about finding the elusive - “why” - which is the primordial reason for developing brand loyalty, making friends, selling, and all other aspects of our life.

Great leaders are able to inspire other people to act and make a difference. Leaders give their following a sense of purpose and belonging - making people do the work for themselves - without an external benefit to be gained.

Apple, Disney, Harley Davidson, and Southwest airlines are prime examples of companies whose leadership inspires the employees, customers and even the stock holders to align with their WHY.

A world that doesn’t start with why

It is important to start with the basics - like a Japanese car manufacturer that has focused on each part being perfect, unlike an American car manufacturer that employs a person at the end of an assembly line who uses a mallet to make the assembly perfect. Working inside out - bottoms up - helps with coming with a a clean message, a focused outlook and a more refined product.

If the WHY (or purpose) isn’t very well defined, people resort to alternatives of manipulation to get customers to take action. Some of these are:

Price: Reducing price to attract customers
Promotions: Running promotions - such as rebates to gain an edge over competition
Fear: Fear of the alternative if item is not purchased. (fear motivates to move away from something horrible)
Aspiration: Showing a shiny object to move towards (Aspiration motivates to move towards something desirable)
Peer Pressure: Friends, family, competition or celebrity using a product
Novelty: New and interesting features in a given product

Manipulation techniques do not inspire repeat business or loyalty. It is a short term transaction oriented approach to sales. Having loyal employee and customer base not only reduces costs but also provides massive peace of mind.

Manipulations work, but they are not sustainable and do not drive loyalty. There is an alternative.

An alternative perspective

As an alternative to manipulation Sinek suggests inspiring rather than manipulating. In order to inspire one needs to know their purpose.

Golden Circle

Sinek introduces the concept of Golden Circle

WHAT: Every company knows what they do and can describe the service they provide HOW: Some companies know HOW they do WHAT they provide. This is often known as the differentiator WHY: Very few companies know WHY they do WHAT they are doing. This defines the purpose, cause or belief that people can associate with. This is the belief that resonates with customers, employees and even investors.

Sinek illustrates how starting marketing or advertising with the WHY helps the consumer connect with the brand and provides the reason to buy, and the actual product is just proof of the WHY.

People do not buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.

More qualified and products often fail, when up against people and products that have a much better defined WHY. E.g. Wright Brothers were the first people to build an airplane, even though Samuel Langley was much more qualified and funded to build an airplane. Other examples include Creative Technology Ltd. which was much more better positioned to sell a music player as compared to Apple - which was largely a computer brand at that point.

Companies that have a clear sense of WHY never worry about competition. They don’t think of themselves as being like everyone else and they don’t have to “convince” anyone of their value.

Having good quality products (or WHAT you sell) is ofcourse very important, but when the WHY is clearly defined, the WHAT sells much more easily.

If a customer feels inspired to buy a product rather than manipulated, they will be able to verbalize the reasons why they think what they bought is better and inspires loyalty in the product and brand.

Knowing your WHY is not the only way to be successful, but it is the only way to maintain a lasting success.

It is all biological It is biological for humans to feel belonged. Our desire to feel like we belong is so powerful that we will go to great length and do irrational things.

Such gut decisions don’t happen in your stomach. The limbic brain is responsible for making these gut decisions and feelings of trust and loyalty. However the limbic brain has no capacity for language - which is why it cannot quite describe the actual reasons for making the decision.

Figuring out the WHY is hard work. e.g. laundry detergent manufactures took a long time to discover that people resonated with the WHY of smelling fresh laundry rather than the “whiteness” of their clean laundry.

Clarity, discipline and consistency To understand the WHY - clarity is most important. In order to get to HOW to achieve your WHY one needs discipline.

Make HOW actionable - Nouns are not actionable, verb are actionable. E.g. instead of “integrity” say “always do the right thing”.

Consistency between WHAT and WHY - When the why is well defined, and the message is authentic, there is clear consistency between the product and the purpose of the product.

Leaders need a following

Leads can inspire a following if there is trust. With trust comes value - real value, not just value equated with money.

To inspire trust, we need to find employees who connect with your WHY, so that they cab believe in what you believe. When you fill an organization with good fits, people who believe what you believe, success just happens - everyone is moving towards the same goal.

Everyone in the planet is passionate about something, but it is not the same things that we are all passionate about - so it is important to find the right people who are passionate about the same things are you are.

Great companies don’t hire skilled people are motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them.

Average companies give their people something to work on. In contrast, the most innovative organizations give their people something to work towards - that way people are achieving their own personal WHY while in alignment with the company’s WHY.

Trust comes from knowing how good someone is at what they do. It also comes from influence of others and their recommendations.

Law of Diffusion

According to law of diffusion, the entire population is made up of 5 segments:

2.5% are innovators
13.5% are early adopters
34% are early majority
34% are late majority
16% are laggards

When you have a new product, it is always good strategy to first market to the early adopters, rather than the majority. The early adopters offer loyalty and a following, which can be used to target the early and late majority of the market. Tivo is a company that was perfectly positioned, but made the grave mistake of targeting the majority, before building their loyal customer base and eventually did not succeed.

According to the Law of Diffusion, mass-market success can only be achieved after you penetrate between 15% to 18% of the market.

Building a loyal customer base means the the people are willing to suffer some inconvenience or pay a premium in to do business with you. They perceive value in what you do, and have trust and belief in what you do. They are the ones who, on their own volition, will tell others about you. These are the people who share your beliefs and what to incorporate your ideas.

How to rally those who believe

Energy of leaders excites, but charisma of leaders inspires. The goal is to amplify the source of inspiration. Figure out a way to amplify the WHY of the CEO to the HOW that is implemented by the next level of people.

Those who know WHY need those who know HOW. Just having an idea and purpose doesn’t help, one needs to know how to bring it to reality.

HOW-types doesn’t need WHY-types to do well. But WHY-types for all their vision and imagination, often get the short end of the stick. Without HOW-type people to complement them WHY-types might end up as starving visionaries.

Being authentic is the core of communicating the WHY. Say it only if you believe it.

The ability of some companies not to just succeed but to repeat their success is due to the loyal following they command, the throngs of people who root for their success.

Greatfulness is repeatable - for instance look at Ron Bruder.

When a company is small, it revolves around the personality of the founder. There is no debate that the founder’s personality is the personality of the company. As the company grows, the CEO’s job is to personify the WHY. To ooze it, to talk it, to preach it. E.g. There is no difference between Sir Richard Branson’s personality and that of Virgin’s personality. Similarly there is no difference between Steve Jobs’ personality and Apple’s personality.

The struggle that so many companies have to differentiate and communicate their true value to the outside world is not a business problem, it is a biology problem. Like people struggle with putting words to emotions, companies also struggle with that aspect of communication. We rely on metaphors, imagery and analogies to communicate how we feel.

The goal for any business - Communicate clearly and you will be understood.

Celery Test

Celery test is a simple test to evaluate exactly the WHAT and HOW is aligned to your WHY. E.g. people might suggest you to buy Oreo cookies, cake, coconut milk and celery to help your business. However, if your WHY is to eat healthy - Oreo cookies and cake will not pass the celery test.

Using the celery test to evaluate your choices will help in making the right choices for the business. The more celery you use, the more trust you can build.

The biggest challenge is success

The single greatest challenge any organization will face is success. All companies start out small, and as they grow the founders use their gut to make the decisions for their company. As the company grows, it becomes virtually impossible for the single person to make all the right decisions for the company.

School Bus Test If the founder or a leader were to be hit by a school bus, would the organization continue to thrive at the same pace without them?

To pass the school bus test the founders WHY must be extracted and integrated into the culture of the company. A strong succession plan should aim to find a leader inspired by the founding cause and ready to lead it into the next generation.

Figuring out what to measure - the right KPI’s - is what defines goals and what gets done. E.g. Christina Halbridge changed the business of debt collection from being aggressive to building a connection with the recipient. She measured the effectiveness based on the number of thank you cards her employees sent. They were incredibly successful not only because of the WHY, but also because she found the right way to measure the WHY.

Discover why

Discovering WHY is hard work. One can discover WHY by looking back and analyzing the reason behind why some projects wok and others don’t.

If you follow your WHY, others will follow you. When you compete against others, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.

Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist, and the ability to communicate it. Leaders inspire action.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

2019-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

This book is by Scott Adams - the Author of Dilbert comics. Adams does a phenomenal job of break down the psychology behind failing and winning, and simple techniques to implement them in your own life.

Overview of the concepts of the book

Goals are for losers - if you are setting goals for yourselves you are losing
Your mind is a moist computer that you can program.
The most important thing that you can track is your personal energy
Every skill that you acquire doubles your odds of success
Happiness is good health and freedom of time
Luck is managed and manufactured - you can create it
Conquer shyness by faking it
Fitness is a lever that can move the world
Simplicity transforms ordinary into amazing!

Goals vs. Systems

When you have a system you constantly follow that system without worrying about reaching a “destination”. Each day you follow your system is a successful day.

On the other hand, if you have a goal, each day that you are not at your goal you feel that yearning to be at your goal. Each day is another day that you have not achieved that goal. Each day is a failure to reach the goal.

For example, in the world of dieting, eating right is a system, but losing 10 pounds is a goal.

If you do something everyday, it is a system. If you’re waiting to achieve it some day in the future, it is a goal. Most people who are goal oriented stay in a permanent cycle of pre-success failure.

Most people who succeed follow systems not goals.

Another disadvantage of a goal is that once you achieve it, you set a next goal and continue to feel like you have failed till you achieve the goal - thereby living in a continued cycle of presuccess failure.

Deciding vs. Wanting

Everything has a price. If you want success, figure out the price and then pay it. Once you decide on what you want, you are acknowledging the price associated with it and are willing to pay it.

Successful people dont wish for success. They decide to pursue it.

Be Selfish

It is important to be selfish and help yourself first. Only when you are fulfilled can you do something great for others.

If you are not selfish - your other choices are to be stupid, or a burden to society - neither of which are quite helpful to society.

Important things to be selfish about:

personal fitness
eating right
pursuing your career
spending time with family and friends

It is stupid to neglect your health or your career - both of which guarantee long term happiness.

It is especially important to be a little selfish when times are hard, so that when they are better one can give back to society in terms of jobs to others etc.

Maximize personal energy

Have something in like that makes you excited to wake up in the morning.

It is important to have good health, sleep, avoiding stress etc. But one of the major things that can help with maximizing energy is to have something in life that makes one excited to wake up in the morning.

When a sad person enters a room, the energy of the entire room drops, but when a happy person enters a room one can feel the energy of the entire room rising. Try to be the latter.

Manage mental state to task: Do the task that is suited for a given mental state. E.g. when relaxed do the task suited for it (like creative tasks).
Simplifiers vs Optimizers: Simplifiers prefer the easy way of doing a task. An optimizer looks for the best solution. Simplification of tasks frees up energy. Optimizing is goal oriented, and often leads to spending more energy to maximize achieving of goals. Be a simplifier unless necessary.
Sitting position: The mind takes cues from the body based on how we sit stand etc. E.g. if you sit in a relaxed position - like slouching, the brain with start the relaxation subroutine. If you sit up straight and ready for work, the brain will start the engaging subroutine.
Tidiness: Every time you see a messy room and think about cleaning it, it is a distraction from your more important thoughts.
Knowledge (or no knowledge): Everyone has the fear of not knowing things that are required by their career. But - our problem isn’t unique. There is always someone who has a similar problem and other who have provided solutions for it. Adams recommends “flash research” - which means spending just 1 minute on search engine to learn some basic ideas/solutions to the problem.
Be a nice person: Don’t be a jerk!
Priorities: Set clear priorities in your life. Adams’ priorities are - him, job, family, city, country ….

Managing your Attitude

It is an art (or science?) to control your attitude directly, as opposed to letting the environment dictate how you feel. In a way it is like a superpower!

You can control your attitude by manipulating your thoughts, your body, and your environment.

Exercise, food and sleep - these are the minimum requirements to have a good attitude
Daydreaming positive things - make you feel positive and happy. Dream without worrying about whether those dreams will come true.
Work on projects that have chance to change the world
Work on projects that make you excited to get out of bed in the morning
Smile! Smiling make you feel better, even if your smile is fake
Success in easy for you areas - if you are successful in one area, it spills over into other areas of your life.
Pick a delusion - This idea is similar to wearing “lucky socks” for a test/game or doing something irrational just because you feel that it will be helpful to you somehow. If you believe that you are writing something that millions will read, it motivates you to write. Pick your delusional belief if it help you build a better attitude towards your work.
Fake it till it becomes real. When it becomes real, one can quickly adopt the mannerisms and skills associated with the new status and position.

Recognizing your Talents and Knowing When to Quit

Malcolm Gladwell wrote that it takes 1000 hours of practice to become an expert in just about anything.

Things that someday work out well, start out well. Things that never work start out bad and stay that way. One rarely sees a stillborn failure that transforms into a stellar success.

Believe more in what people say, than what people do. They say things to spare your feelings, and be nice. They are far more honest with what they do. If they really like something that you write, or create they will share it, talk about it and email and tweet about it.

It is generally true that if people are not excited about what you create in the beginning, they will not be excited about it later on and they never will be.

Practice!

The more you practice, the better you will get. The hard part is figuring out what to practice and what skill to acquire. If you code more - you become a better code. If you manage more - you become a better manager.

Practice involves putting your consciousness in suspended animation.

Practice is mundane, and it isn’t living. But when you used the skills that you have acquired via practice, and merge it with life experiences, you feel alive!

Managing the odds for success

Every skill that you acquire doubles the odds for success. Two skills that you are good at is better than one skill that you are excellent at.
The more you know, the more you can know. Once you get into the habit of reading, you want to read more and more, and can learn more and more.

The Math of Success

The world is made of math, and not magic. We should pick a game where the odds of winning are better. According to Adams, the odds of success increase significantly if one masters the following:

Public Speaking: It gives tremendous power to talk about ideas and share knowledge.
Psychology: It is important to understand psychology to sell, to convert ideas, to communicate. If there was just one skill to acquire, psychology would be it! A good place to start is by going down and learning about Wikipedia’s list of cognitive bias.
Business Writing: Business writing is all about getting to the point and leave out all the noise. It is also the foundation of humor writing/
Accounting: If you don’t know accounting, you have a giant knowledge gap in life or business. Learn how to manage money, and do your accounting.
Design (the basics): Some basic understanding of how to make something look pleasing is important - be it PowerPoint slides, or website.
Conversation: To be a skilled conversationalist, all you have to do is introduce yourself and ask questions until you find a point of mutual interest. It is laughably simple! The point of the conversation is to make the other person feel good.
Overcoming Shyness: Shyness is analogous to swimming - we are not born with it, but we can learn it and practice overcoming shyness, as we can swim.
Second Language: Often qualify you for a large range of jobs as compared to peers
Golf: Business gets done on a golf course. Women would especially benefit from learning golf.
Proper Grammar: Talking in bad grammar is a put off, and people can easily dismiss you and your skills if you do not present them with proper grammar.
Persuasion: No matter what you do in life, you will spend a lot of time persuading people to do things. e.g. closing a sale, getting a kid to eat their greens, managing employees etc.
Technology: Good to know basics so that you can learn whatever you need, and can talk intelligently about it.
Proper voice technique: It is helpful to have different vocal strategies for different scenarios. E.g. high pitched fun voice should be different from low pitched persuasive voice for the respective scenarios. Breathing techniques and posture also help with the right voice techniques.

Besides the above, a couple other skills to develop are:

Lack of fear or embarrassment
Get the right kind of education - no rick of unemployment
Exercise

Affirmations

Affirmations are simply the practice of repeating to yourself what you want to achieve while imagining the outcome that you want. Adams mentions that working with affirmations has always yielded a better outcome for him then not working with affirmations. It is a very simple and positive practice, so why not do it?

Timing is luck

If the timing is not right, no amount of hard work will make things move forward. But you can allow luck to follow you by getting the timing right.

Association Programming

Associating with successful people makes you think in a different way, and be successful by association.

Studies show that if you hand out with overweight people, you could gain weight. Similarly living around optimistic winners can make you one too. Qualities of the people you hang out with can run off on you.

Happiness

The only reasonable goal in life is to maximize your total lifetime experience of happiness. It is important to understand what happiness is, and how it works.

The simplest way to enable more happiness is by managing your body chemistry with exercise, diet, sleep and daydream happy things for yourself. These strongly influence mood.

Another things that helps with happiness is to have the option of a flexible schedule by being in control of your time.

Finally have a routine helps with removing the paradox of choice and simplifying life. Thereby routines help happiness.

Diet

It is possible to change your food preferences by thinking of your body as a programmable robot, rather than a fleshy bag of magic.

Experiment with different types of food and see how they make you feel? Do carbs put you to sleep - even if you had them at breakfast? So fresh greens and fruit make you more awake and make you want to workout later? Discover correlations between foods and your body, and pick the types of food that enable you to live the life that you want to live - that helps you achieve the goals that you want to achieve.

A simple way to disengage from sugar and simple carbs is to allow yourself to each as much as you want of anything healthy - try lots of other types of food to your hearts content - cheese, peanuts, fruits. Eventually the appeal of simple carbs goes away.

Make healthy food taste good. Learn new recipes and make food such that even the foods that you didnt like before become enjoyable.

Avoid foods that feel like punishment - that isnt sustainable!

Hanging out with fit people make you wnat to be fit too.

Adams also recommends having 2-4 cups of coffee per day - a great way to manage your energy levels.

Fitness

Be active every day

If you can be active every day - without having to think about it and just doing it daily - like brushing your teeth - you wont have to use your limited supply of willpower for it.

Once exercise becomes habitual, you wont need willpower to sustain it. Find an easy way to incorporate exercise into your routine such that it works with your mind and body.

Schedule your exercise at the same time every day, to get into a routine and a “no-brainer”.

Don’t take any rest days. Just work out at your pace each day, and every day. When your body gets stronger, you will automatically start taking on harder exercises.

Reward yourself after exercising - small snack, or anything else that you feel is reasonable.

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

2019-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Author’s profile and book description: So Good that they can’t ignore you, by Cal Newport

There was once a person who wanted to become a monk. He believed that once he becomes a monk and discovers his truth, he will feel peace and bliss. He discovers it - the feeling of being one with the world and the universe, but he still feels empty. He knows what he wanted to know, but he still is the same person, and it doesn’t change who he is or what he does. Fulfilling his dream to become a full time Zen practitioner did not magically make his life wonderful.

In reality, career passions are rare. Most passions are related to art, sports and hobbies. It is wise to stay away from passions as they can be misleading.
Passion takes time to develop. The more time you spend on something the better you will get at it and more passionate you will feel about it. ABout 10,000 hours is what is takes to master something.
Passion is a side effect of mastery.

There are 2 types of mindset that one can have:

Craftsman mindset: Focus on what you are producing for your work and your career
Passion mindset - Focus on what your job or work offers you

To do anything successful you need to be so good that they cannot ignore you. This is valid for anything in life including

getting a book published
getting a music gig
getting a new job
building a scaling a company

If you are good at the core of it - where you are doing what you do really well - it is hard for other people to ignore you.

If you have the craftsman mindset - you are constantly focusing on what you are producing, how good is the quality of it, how good you are, and if you can become better at what you do. Craftsman mindset is crucial for building a career that you love.

Career Capital - this is the process of building up rare and valuable skills that you can build as your career progresses.

Some traits that define great work:

creativity
impact
control It is the quest of most people to do great work by striving for one of more of these qualities from their work.

How to have a craftsman mindset?

To become amazing at what you do, you need to focus on stretching your ability by receiving feedback from others. This will push you to get better and become more open to criticism.
Deep Study - it takes 10,000 hours of work to become great at something. And it takes a lot of time to study something at its core.

If you just show up and work hard, you will soon his a performance plateau beyond which you will fail to get any better. To successfully adopt the craftsman mindset we have to approach our work with a dedication to deliberate practice - like Gary Kasparov does with chess.

To adopt a craftsman mindset you need to constantly solicit feedback from colleagues and professionals. You need to start enjoying criticism.

In order to master something and do deep work, you need to be mindful of where you are spending your time through the day. Create a spreadsheet recording the time you spend doing deep work and high priority work. Work towards getting your spreadsheet looking like how you want it to look.

5 habits of a craftsman

Knowing what capital market you are in: There are 2 types of markets - winner-takes-all market where there is a single monopoly, and auction market - where there are several players in the market - each owning a part of the pie. e.g. blogging is a a winer takes all market, clean teach is an auction market. Knowing which market you are in helps you develop a strategy on how to work towards a solution,
Identify your capital type: Which skills are important to acquire in the market that you are in? Seek “open gates” which are opportunities to build you skills or market capital.
Define good - what is good enough for you? How good do you need to be?
Stretch and destroy - doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that is exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands. Deliberate practice is above all an effort of focus and concentration. That is what makes it “deliberate” as distinct from the mindless playing of scales or hitting of tennis balls that most people engage in.

Deliberate practice is often the opposite of enjoyable. If you are not uncomfortable then you are probably stuck at an acceptable level

Be patient - acquiring capital takes time.

Control trap - It is dangerous to pursue control in your working life before you have career capital to offer in exchange.

Control over your work gives you happiness and fulfillment, but it is important to acquire career capital (patiently) before you use that to increase your control over your work.

The law of financial viability - “Do what people are willing to pay for”

When deciding whether to follow an appealing pursuit that will introduce more control in your work like, seek evidence of whether people are willing to pay for it. If you find this evidence - continue - if not - move on.

Mission - A unifying mission to your working life can be a source of great satisfaction

Missions require little bets, these can be transformed into successes by using small and achievable projects.

Missions require marketing. Missions can be transformed into great successes as a result of projects that satisfy the law of “remarkability”.

This means an idea inspires people to remark about it and it launches at a venture where such remarking is made easy. Pay attention to where you launch an idea. E.g. if you launch a social media idea at a farm it isn’t remarkable, but if you launch an agrotech idea at a farm it might be remarkable.

Working right trumps finding the right work.

A Universe from Nothing

2019-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

Lawrence Krauss answers questions about the universe - where it came from, what was there before, what will the future bring, and if it all really came from nothing.

New York Times article about the book: A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing - by Lawrence M. Krauss

NPR interview with Lawrence Krauss: A Universe from Nothering

The Beginning

When Einstein completed his new theory of gravity (which is known as the general theory of relativity) and tried to apply it to describe the universe, it became clear that this theory did not describe the universe in which he lived. At that time, the universe as considered static and eternal - consisting of a single galaxy. It was not until he applied the theory of relativity on the orbit of Mercury - and it explained the slight deviation of Mercury’s orbit, did we discover that the universe is in fact - not static.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovered that the brightness of stars goes down inversely with the square of the distance to the star. So if we are able to compute the brightness of the star, we can infer the distance to it! This helped discover that the universe isn’t composed of just the Milky Way but billions of other galaxies.

“Absorption lines” (dark bands in the light spectrum) are observed when a ray of light is split into individual components using a prism. This means that something in the atmosphere is absorbing a certain spectrum of light. The absorption lines were wavelengths that were absorbed by known materials on Earth - including hydrogen, oxygen, iron, sodium etc. Each new absorption line discovered helped us discover a new element. e.g. Helium.

Along similar lines was the term “Doppler effect” - waves coming at you from a moving source will be stretched when the source of moving away, and compressed when moving towards you. This same phenomenon is observed in light waves also. Using this phenomenon it was observed that absorption lines from spiral nebulae were almost all shifted towards longer wavelengths - which led to the conclusion that those objects are moving away from us at considerable velocities.

This led to the conclusion that our universe is expanding.

The Big Bang happened - during which nuclear reactions readily take place between protons and neutrons as they bind together and breaks apart. Following this the universe cools, and it can be predicted how frequently these nuclear constituents with bind to form nuclei of atoms. and it explains the presence of light elements. Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium were created during the Big Bang. The other heavier components - Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Iron were made in the fiery cores of stars and reach us when the star explodes.

If everything is moving apart right now at a tremendous rate, it probably was closer together in earlier times. The age of the universe is inferred to be 13 billion years.

Weighing the Universe

Vera Rubin observed that the stars and hot gas that are farther away from the center of the galaxy are moving much faster that they should have been if the gravitational force driving their movement was due to the mass of the observed objects within the galaxy. So we have computed the mass of the universe incorrectly basing it only on the matter that we can see. There is more mass that we cannot see - dark matter.

Einstein proposed a theory that space would curve in the presence of matter or energy. This lead us to believe that our universe can have three different geometries - open (continue to expand forever at a finite rate), closed (one day will re-collapse - reverse big bang) or flat (slowing down but never quite stopping).

Determining the amount of dark matter will help us identify how the universe will end.

Einstein demonstrated that space acts like a lens - bending and magnifying light - just like lenses in reading glasses. This meant that if a bright object is located behind an intervening distribution of mass, light rays going out on various directions could bend around the intervening distribution and converge again - magnifying the original object and producing several copies of it - called lensing.

Fritz Zwicky took this theory and said it could be used for :

Testing general relativity
Use galaxies as a telescope to magnify more distant objects
Resolving the mystery of why clusters appear to weigh more than accounted for in visible matter

All experiment point to the universe being flat.

Dark matter must be made of something entirely new - something that we have not found on earth yet.

Curvature of Universe

Weighing the universe leads to inconsistencies in measurement, because we cannot measure what we cannot see, and we don’t know what we cannot see in the universe. It would be better to measure the geometry of the whole universe.

How to observe curvature? The sum of the angles of a 3D surface is greater than 180.

Cosmic microwave background radiation - has been under our noses for decades, but was discovered by 2 scientists in New Jersey. As we look out at distant objects, we are looking back in time - because light takes longer for us to get from these objects. In theory, if we keep looking farther enough, we can look all the way to the big bang. However, in practice, there is a wall between us - not a physical wall, but more of an interference.

It is theorized that when the universe was 300,000 years old it was made of dense plasma of charged particles. However, plasma can be opaque to radiation. This means that the charged particles within the plasma absorb photons and re-emit them so that radiation cannot easily pass through such a material uninterrupted. As a result, one cannot look back in time to see beyond this time when the universe was comprised of such plasma. This time then - is the last scattering surface. So - if we can take a picture of this last scattering surface, we can actually get a picture of the universe that is merely 300,000 years into its existence.

We used a hot air balloon and later a space probe to compute the hot and cold spots of microwave background radiation from the universe. Plotting them shows that the universe is flat. However, based on the computation of the weight of the universe, the universe still seems to way 3x less than what it should to be a flat universe.

Inside atoms

There is energy inside atoms. Each matter has its accompanying antimatter. Electron has positrons (-ve has positive counterparts)

Dark Energy

There is something in “nothingness” of the universe. The empty space - blankness has energy - dark energy Universe is accelerating in its expansion.

Universe is NOTHING

When a balloon is blown larger and larger, the curvature at its surface get smaller and smaller. Something similar happens for the universe whose size is expanding exponentially.

In a flat universe, and only in a flat universe, the total average Newtonian gravitational energy of each object moving with the expansion is precisely zero.

In such a universe, the positive energy of motion is exactly canceled by the negative energy of gravitational attraction.

Next Chapter

Galaxies do not suddenly disappear. Rather, as their recession speed approaches the speed of light, the light from these objects gets even more red-shifted. Eventually all their visible light moves to infrared, microwave, radio wave, and so on, until the wavelength of light they emit ends up becoming larger than the size of the visible universe, at which point they officially become invisible. This will happen in about 150 billion years.

Rising Strong

2019-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

In Rising Strong, Brené Brown talks about how we often fall when we try, and goes into great detail about how we can change the narratives in our mind, and the stories that we tell ourselves to be able to rise up again.

Author Page: Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead - by Brené Brown

The Physics of Vulnerability

Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It is having the courage to show up without knowing or having any control of the outcome.

A few rules of engagement for rising strong:

If we are brave enough - often enough - we will fall. This is the physics of vulnerability.
Once we are in the service of being brave - it isn’t possible to go back
This journey belongs to you alone - no one can do it for you.
We are wired for story - anything happens we make a story for it explaining it.
Creativity takes knowledge from our heads to our hearts through our hands.
Rising Strong can be applicable in professional or personal aspects of life
Comparing your suffering is caused due to fear and scarcity. Pain is pain - it is stupid to compare different peoples pain - just makes you deny your own pain or makes you feel bad for feeling pain when others are going through more.
Vulnerability and courage are unique and custom for each person. It isn’t possible to engineer a one size fits all solution.
Courage is contagious. When you observe courage and vulnerability, it transforms you.
Rising Strong is a spiritual practice.

You can’t skip day 2

Day 2 is the middle part of your process - when you are in the dark and have no clue what is happening, where you are going. The door behind you has closed, and there is no way you can turn back. The only way is forward, but the light is still far away. It is the point of no return. Day 2 is the non-negotiable part of the process - when things are raw, and real, emotions are high. This is when the struggle seems to real and too large.

Think of it as story telling (book/movie):

Act 1: Protagonist is called on an adventure. Act 2: Protagonist looks for every comfortable way to solve the problem - but is not able to. This act includes the “lowest of the low” Act 3: The protagonist needs to prove that they learned a lesson, and are enlightened character with the knowledge and resolve to solve the problem.

Our “Day 2” is the same as “Act 2” of a movie! The crappy, gut-wrenching, never-ending feeling of everything going wrong. But it is a prerequisite for step 3. You cannot solve the problem - you cannot find your enlightenment till you FEEL the need - REALLY FEEL THE NEED - to fix it - to solve it.

The premise of rising strong - the three acts - are broken down into the following three processes:

The Reckon
The Rumble
The Revolution

Reckon

“Reckoning” - is the process where we assess where we are at and what we are feeling. It isn’t a simple process. Recognizing emotion means being aware of how we are thinking - the storing we are making up - the people we are finding to blame.

No real transformation can happen unless we are able to assess, acknowledge and observe our current situation for what it is - without judgment of the situation or ourselves.

We don’t like to feel difficult emotions, and we don’t know what to do with discomfort and vulnerability. Our instinct tells us to run from pain. But despite our fears, a part of us wants to engage in emotions - because they are also the juice of life. When we suppress and diminish our emotions, we feel deprived. But then we watch reality shows like - fear factor - seeking emotional intensity - which is only a simulation and does not teach us anything about ourselves.

Curiosity is what leads to reckoning - but it is the core of life. Curiosity makes us question and learn. It is an act of vulnerability and courage - vulnerability in not knowing, and courage in being brave enough to want to find out.

Rumble

“Reckoning” is when we walk into our story, but “Rumble” is when we OWN it. To rumble is when we are getting honest about the stories that we are telling ourselves and making up about our struggles.

Reckoning leads us to a place where we are face down on an arena floor. Rumble is when we are trying to figure out what the heck is happening. Our brains reward us with dopamine when we recognize and complete patterns - stories are those patterns. Even though the stories we make up are incomplete and incorrect - we still run with them for the dopamine reward.

E.g. when a husband is rude to his wife, her first thought is - “he is a bad man who tricked me into marrying him for 20 years”, or “I am the problem. I am not enough and I need to do more - which is why he is rude to me. “

There is growing evidence that healthy, ordinary people are strikingly prone to “confabulate” in every day situations. These are stories - lies - that are told honestly. E.g. when shoppers were asked to pick socks from 10 different pairs and answer why - they gave elaborate and unique reasons for picking what they did, even though the socks were all identical. (The reasons are the stories that we make up for ourselves)

To capture these “first stories” are learn from them - we need to use our creativity. The most effective way is to write your SFD (shitty first draft) - of your thoughts and emotions. This is equivalent to a child’s draft - no one is going to see it and you can shape it later. It allows this childlike part of you to channel whatever voices and visions some though and onto the page.

Delta - is the difference between what we make up about our experiences and the actual truth that we discover through our rumbling. Deltas are also where rivers meet the sea - they are marshy, full of sediment, rich, fertile areas of growth, and forever changing.

Is everyone doing the best they can? No one knows - but it feels better when we believe that everyone is doing the best they can in the circumstances that they are in. It helps us let go of our judgment, and blame of others, and accept them for who they are.

Do you attach your self worth to being a helper? We are social people and everyone needs help at one time or another. Accepting readily and helping others when they need help is a comforting process. Judging yourself or others for needing help isn’t a productive process and holds us back.

Change your narrative from “I am a failure” to “I failed at X”. While the first talks about the “state” the second is an activity. Moving from the first to the second narrative gives you the room to change or fix what went wrong in the incident “X” and move on from it.

Revolution

A revolution starts with a new vision of what is possible. Our vision is that we can rise from our experiences of hurt and struggle in a way that allows us to live more wholehearted lives.

Our willingness to rumble, learn from it and change ourselves - together - is what leads to a revolution.

The 5 Rs:

Respect: yourself and others Rumble: on ideas and strategies, misunderstandings Rally: together to own our decisions, learnings Recover: with family friends Reach out: To each other with love and empathy

Braving the Wilderness

2019-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

This book is about our struggle to try to “belong” to something, what the belonging means. This book inspires the reader to belong to themselves, and giving yourselves that place in the universe that you seek acceptance from.

Author Page: Braving the Wilderness, A quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone - by Brené Brown

Everywhere and Nowhere

In this chapter Dr. Brown talks about the famous quote by Dr. Maya Angelou

You are only free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.

As humans we find great comfort in belonging to something - a team, a group, a place that gives comfort of community. Brené Brown talks about her childhood - growing up in New Orleans, Texas, Washington DC and the impact that it had in her life to belong somewhere. She talks about how she didn’t get into her school drill team - something she desperately wanted, to enable her to belong somewhere and have an enviable social life. She talks about the desire to belong in our families, and with our spouses.

The biggest desire that is often unmet is our need to belong to ourselves - giving ourselves the permission to be us - and following our path and our truth - unadulterated by judgment from ourselves and from others.

We belong everywhere - and yet we don’t belong completely at any one place. But the realization that we belong to ourselves is huge - it is a steep uphill realization, but the rewards are incredible.

The Quest for True Belonging

We want to belong - truly and completely in a way that is authentic and unconditional.

Dr. Brown studied that we (as humans) want to belong to a larger community and experience being part of something - but without giving up our own self and our own authenticity. It is hard for us to chose between being loyal to ourselves and being loyal to a group - which creates some pressure to “conform” and to “fit in”.

The definition of trusting can be captured by the acronym BRAVING

B - Boundaries - Respect boundaries, and if unclear ask!
R - Reliability - Say what you do and do what you say
A - Accountability - Own your mistakes and apologize and make amends
V - Vault - Don’t share information that is not yours to share
I - Integrity - Chose the right path, instead of the easy path
N - Non-judgment - Ask for what you need, and don’t judge others for what they need
G - Generosity - Be generous with your intentions, words and actions of others

Applying the concept of BRAVING to yourself - do you trust yourself?

B - do you respect your own boundaries?
R - are you reliable with yourself?
A - are you accountable with yourself?
V - do you respect your vault/your information?
I - do you act with integrity?
N - do you ask for what you need?
G - are you generous towards yourself?

True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both - being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to CHANGE who you are; it requires you to BE who you are.

High Lonesome: A Spiritual Crisis

“High Lonesome” - that holler that is in between a spirited yippee and a painful wail - something that is thick with misery and redemption.

We have geographically, politically and spiritually sorted ourselves into like-minded groups in which we grow more extreme in our thinking, and consume only the facts that support our beliefs - making it even more easier to ignore evidence that our positions are wrong. So we live in a giant feedback loop - hearing our own thoughts about what is right and wrong being bounced back to us in the TV shows that we watch, books we read etc.

We sort ourselves and also others in an unintentional and reflexive manner - but it creates distances and divisiveness. We are all ideologically diverse. However selecting like-minded friends and neighbors and separating ourselves from people whom we think of as different has not delivered that deep sense of belonging that we are hardwired to crave.

Loneliness is - “perceived social isolation”. We experience it when we feel disconnected. “Loneliness” and “being alone” are very different things. Being alone is finding therapy in solace, being lonely is feeling disconnected from your surroundings.

To combat loneliness we must first learn to identify it, and then treat it like a warning sign - signaling a need for socialization - like the warning sign we get from our body when we are hungry (and need food), or thirsty (and need water).

High lonesome can be a beautiful and powerful place if we can own our pain and share it, instead of inflicting pain on others - and if we can find a way to FEEL the hurt (and do something about it) rather than SPREAD the hurt.

People are Hard to Hate Close Up: MOVE IN!

We might hate or dislike large groups of people of a certain category, but we can love individuals belonging to those categories.

e.g. “Democrats are such losers” - yes - except your coworker who helped watch your kids when you were taking care of your sick family member. e.g. “Republicans are selfish assholes” - yes - except your son-in-law who is so kind and warm.

We don’t like certain ideologies - which bring us pain - but to deny our own pain, or denying others pain - neither of those options really work. We need to be able to find a way to get on the same page.

Anger needs to be transformed into something life-giving - like courage, love, change, compassion and justice.

Courage is forged in pain - but not in all pain. Pain that is denied or ignored becomes fear or hate. Anger that is never transformed becomes resentment and bitterness.

Some thoughts on conflict resolution:

Q: Sometimes we decide to “agree to disagree”. Does that work?
A: “Agree to disagree” without exploring the full nature of the disagreement leads to avoidance and making assumptions. The goal should be increased mutual understanding.
Q: If we decide to continue working on a disagreement, how do we push through the vulnerability and stay civil?
A: Find out what the conversation is “really about”, what is the “common goal”. Understand each others motives and interests more closely
Q: “Putting people on the stand” - you said “X” last week but you are saying “Y” now, which ones is it?
A: It never helps to go down that route. Focus on “where are we now”? “What are we trying to accomplish for the future”? “What do we want our relationship to be going forward”? Shift the focus on getting on the same page.
Q: “Conflict transformation” instead of “conflict resolution”. Why?
A: The latter dissipates the tension to go back to previous states of affairs, the former transforms the conflict to a higher level of understanding and creating something new from the situation.
Q: I am preparing arguments in my head when other people are talking. But I don’t like it when others do it to me. What is the alternative?
A: One of the more courageous things to do is to say - “tell me more”. Just when you want to end the conversation, turn away etc - use it as an opportunity to fully understand the other persons perspective even better. Listen to them - really listen. We have to listen the same way we want to be understood.

We have to listen the same way we want to be understood.

Speak Truth to Bullshit. Be Civil.

Liar, truth speaker - are different sides to the same game. Liar is aware of the authority of the truth, but ignores it. A bullshitter is playing another game - ignoring the rules of the game altogether - he pays no attention to truth or lying and just says what he wants to say.

It is easier to stay civil when we are combating lying, as opposed to when we are speaking truth to bullshit. When we are bullshitting, we are not interested in the truth as a shared starting point. This makes arguing about truth not important and the focus shifts to - what I think matters and not the truth.

Civility is about disagreeing without disrespect and seeking common ground as the starting point.

A man chided his father for using the term “oriental” for the fathers next door neighbor who the father was very close with. The father clearly didn’t know that “orient” was a derogatory term and was not used anymore. The conversation could be civil by simply stating it without judgment to the father instead of making the father feel ashamed for using the wrong word.

It is a paradox to be able to be civil when someone is bullshitting and trying to illicit an emotional and irrational response to you. But when you belong to you, you are true to yourself, and it is easier to be civil when you are honoring yourself and your place in the world rather than responding to another persons emotion.

Hold Hands with Strangers

Collective joy and collective pain are sacred experiences. The joy shared by a stadium full of people watching football, or the joy shared by humankind for successful space mission - brings us together in an inexplicable sense of being.

The pain that we share when something goes wrong in our world - even imaginary world like when Professor Dumbledore died in Harry Potter is shared by our collective beings and the sorrow brings us together.

The more we are willing to seek out the moments of collective joy (in person not online), the more it becomes difficult to deny our human connection.

The bond that we often share with some people - connected by our collective hate of other people or other things, is a counterfeit connection as the opposite of true belonging. The emotion we experience is intense and immediately gratifying, and an easy way to discharge outrage and pain, but is NOT fuel for real connection. Social media is one such example - not a real connection.

Experiencing collective joy or pain needs courage. And the foundation of courage is vulnerability. We need to be vulnerable and open to be able to experience joy - true joy - not an instant gratification like feeling that one might get by dehumanizing someone else.

We are afraid to be vulnerable enough to feel joy - which is why when we experience it - we sucker punch it by thinking the most horrific thing we can. E.g. Vacation - hurricane, kids going to prom - car crash. The only way to combat it is by “gratitude”. It is only possible to fully lean in to joy if we can practice gratitude.

No vulnerability, no courage

Strong back. Soft Front. Wild Heart.

Having a strong back - metaphorically speaking - and develop a spine that is flexible yet sturdy, we are confident in our shell, and have a strong core of belonging to ourselves.

With a strong back, we can afford to have a soft front - vulnerable and open - letting the world see us for who we are and what we are. A soft and open front is not being weak - it is being brave and being the wilderness.

A wild heart is being awake to the pain of the world, but does not diminish its own pain. A wild heart can beat with gratitude, lean it to pure joy.

Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion

2019-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

This book is about how our brain loves shortcuts, and other people can make us follow them by pushing our emotional buttons. These manipulators are everywhere in the industry, they’re compliance professionals, and their entire job is to influence you into doing what they want.

Author Page: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

The world is a complex place, where you can’t process everything, and our brains evolved to use these shortcuts to make decisions.

Sadly others can hack our brains.

For example, people can skip a line by simply mentioning a reason

At a printer line:

“May I skip the line, because I’m in a rush” - 94% complied

If no reason was given, only 60% complied

Fascinatingly, even BS reasons seemed to work “Can I skip the line, because I want to make copies”

Our shortcut deems any reason sufficient

There are 6 principles for exploitation, widely used by marketing and business people, be wary of them:

Reciprocation
Scarcity
Consistency
Social proof
Likability
Authority

I will expand on each one of them.

1. Reciprocation

Humans have an overpowering need to return favors. Ever received free samples?

That is a trick, since people feel obliged to return favors, even much larger favors. Don’t fall for it.

When colleagues were given a 10 cent gift as a nice gesture, people felt compelled to return 5 times more in return, value of 5 cokes.

We are socially conditioned and evolved to return favors, because otherwise we upset the group, and we are seen as ingrates or moochers, and this fear of being labeled and perceived is what manipulators use to get us to do what they want.

Manipulation tactic: Rejection and retreat Starting with an outrageous price, and retreating from there can win concessions

This is because we feel bad and obliged to refuse the person yet again, even if the first offer was ludicrous

We feel bad to say No. Don’t fall for it

There is also a contrast principle, a bug in our brains: When two items are presented to us one after the other, we magnify the difference of the second from the first item presented.

Defense against Reciprocation tactics:

Make a habit to think if people are genuine
Check people’s reputation with others
If you’re feeling obliged, don’t be. Say No.
Don’t negotiate with people that are playing dirty, and starting with unrealistic offers.

2. Scarcity exploitation - When something is hard to obtain, it makes us inclined to buy it our of fear of missing out (FOMO)

Contributors to scarcity exploitation:

Recency bias (When we perceive the availability of something to be recently decreased, we want it more)
Competitive nature (We hate losing to a rival)
Loss aversion (We like winning, and we hate losing out)

Examples of exploitation through scarcity:

80% off this week Limited offer Limited stock Last chance, sale ends in two days

Scarcity especially applies to time pressures. It causes an eagerness effect, hence people buy out of FOMO

Irrational wish to posses junk

A fun observation on sale exploitation:

In experiments, when people perceived a sale to end, they were inclined to buy it. But they were inclined to buy it even MORE if they were told they were the only ones that knew of the deal.

Manipulation compounds. Don’t be a sucker.

Scarcity sales effect: Banning something makes it more attractive

People want what they can’t have. Grass is always greener where you can’t step. Fixation on the forbidden

Called Romeo & Juliet effect. It’s human nature. It’s all desire.

Humans hate losing opportunities

How to defend against manipulation through scarcity:

Don’t be impulsive
Don’t rush
Have patience
Ignore price decreases

There is always time to make buys, rather than lose out of being impulsive in the long run.

3. Consistency - Staying true to your word

(even when that is not in your interest)

We have a strong desire for consistency, especially internal, not just social.

Done out of laziness, easier for the brain to copy past actions and habits than be creative.

For example, when people observed a beach towel theft, only 20% reacted, but when explicitly asked “please watch this towel”, 95% people reacted, even chasing the guy

What dictates consistency? Commitment.

Socially we become accountable, and our reputation and perception matters to us.

Especially if made explicit, publicly or easily verifiable commitments.

Our self image is malleable, and others that wish to manipulate us can mold it through small unconscious commitments.

See “Dumping strategies” When a new company has absurd low prices just to get consumers hooked, and change their beliefs. “I am an X brand buyer now”

The harder something is to get, the more we value it.

See signaling effects:

Luxury brands
Tribalism
Gang tattoos
making you want a product, then mentioning the price after, or even changing it

Ever wondered why laugh tracks are added in sitcoms. Because our brains short-circuit through imitation, and find stuff funny, which is not.

See on Youtube “laugh track removed” videos

Other examples of copying behavior:

“salting” donation boxes with some initial money
best-seller
luxury brands
everyone facing same way in elevators
bystander effects
evolution of fashion
how suicides increase after celebrity does it
fake endorsements

The more similar we are to others, the more they influence us.

Ingroup vs. outgroup.

Hence why salesmen try to always mention “I do that too” to get you to feel like you are part of the same tribe. Don’t fall for it.

How to defend against social proof manipulation:

Be alert for fake signals
Be wary if people are crafting perceptions on shaky foundations and external validation
Ask reality, and reason from first-principles
Never assume, always check

5. Likability - We comply with people we like and it’s easy for others to trick us into liking them

Best person to sell you something is a friend.

That’s why multi-level marketing schemes are so popular and perverse.

A friend can never wish you harm, right? Unless he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or he has hidden motives.

We’re suckers for compliments and familiarity.

Hence why sales people frequently compliment us and claim similarities to us.

We are also more drawn to attractive people, or popular people, even though they are not competent at all. (Halo effect)

Examples:

good cop/bad cop interrogation
“we on the same team”
“we fighting the same fight”

Anti-thesis: Shoot the messenger effect

How to defend against likability manipulation:

Be skeptical
It’s too good to be true
If you liked someone recently, they’re probably sucking up

6. Authority effect - We obey authorities because they appear competent.

We were raised to obey as kids (fathers, teachers)

But adults are full of shit.

Examples:

Electric shock experiment
Nurse that received note “Add meds in R ear” from doctor, and ended up adding the meds in the poor guy’s ass (“Rear”) instead of right ear

Never assume, always check

Authority negates independent thinking. We trust blindly, assume they know better.

We try to infer symbols of authenticity (uniforms, titles)

Just the brain being lazy.

Don’t trust blindly. Even highly competent and authority figures.

They’re human too. And even if they are competent, maybe their expertise is not applicable with the problem we are facing now.

To avoid authority bias, ask these Q’s:

Is he an authority, or a fake?
Is his authority relevant to the situation?
How honest can an authority be in this situation?
Do they have my best interests at heart.

That was it. Hope it makes you understand your mental shortcuts better, before others manipulate you first.

And remember: “Do your best not to fool yourself, and know that you’re the easiest person to fool”

Rutu’s Book Summaries

Willpower

Is willpower more than a metaphor?

Where does the power in Willpower come from?

The Hard Thing about Hard Things

The beginning

When things fall apart

Take care of the people, the products and the profits - in that order

Concerning the growing concern

How to lead even when you don’t know where you are going

First rule of entrepreneurship - there are no rules

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People

Six Ways to Make People Like You

How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking

Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

Start with Why

A world that doesn’t start with why

An alternative perspective

Leaders need a following

How to rally those who believe

The biggest challenge is success

Discover why

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

Overview of the concepts of the book

Goals vs. Systems

Deciding vs. Wanting

Be Selfish

Maximize personal energy

Managing your Attitude

Recognizing your Talents and Knowing When to Quit

Practice!

Managing the odds for success

The Math of Success

Affirmations

Timing is luck

Association Programming

Happiness

Diet

Fitness

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

How to have a craftsman mindset?

5 habits of a craftsman

A Universe from Nothing

The Beginning

Weighing the Universe

Curvature of Universe

Inside atoms

Dark Energy

Universe is NOTHING

Next Chapter

Rising Strong

The Physics of Vulnerability

You can’t skip day 2

Reckon

Rumble

Revolution

Braving the Wilderness

Everywhere and Nowhere

The Quest for True Belonging

High Lonesome: A Spiritual Crisis

People are Hard to Hate Close Up: MOVE IN!

Speak Truth to Bullshit. Be Civil.

Hold Hands with Strangers

Strong back. Soft Front. Wild Heart.

Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion

1. Reciprocation

2. Scarcity exploitation - When something is hard to obtain, it makes us inclined to buy it our of fear of missing out (FOMO)

3. Consistency - Staying true to your word

4. Social Proof - We often decide the best course of action by copying other people.

5. Likability - We comply with people we like and it’s easy for others to trick us into liking them

6. Authority effect - We obey authorities because they appear competent.