I suspect people over estimate the amount of ketchup they use. They ask for a lot and it gets wasted.
So brands try to give people lesser sauce. One way is to charge them for each pack of ketchup & that reduces their usage. The other way is perhaps to do this. Wonder how well it works.
If you do “this” for “that”, you are likely to be in a state of pain. It is better to do “this” just for “this”.
Otherwise, “this” becomes a hindrance or an obstacle that you just want to get done with. You can’t enjoy it.
I want to exercise vs I have to exercise
Struggling with the concept of disagreement. In certain cases – i disagree but I don’t get the final say. Such cases bring in the art of influence, but for now – this excerpt gives a
Great excerpt from Learn or Die (from Ray Dalio).
I began seeking out the smartest people I could find who disagreed with me so that I could understand their reasoning. Only after I fully grasped their points of view could I decide to reject or accept them. By doing this again and again over the years, not only have I increased my chances of being right, but I have also learned a huge amount.
There’s an art to this process of seeking out thoughtful disagreement. People who are successful at it realize that there is always some probability they might be wrong and that it’s worth the effort to consider what others are saying — not simply the others’ conclusions, but the reasoning behind them — to be assured that they aren’t making a mistake themselves. They approach disagreement with curiosity, not antagonism, and are what I call “open-minded and assertive at the same time.” This means that they possess the ability to calmly take in what other people are thinking rather than block it out, and to clearly lay out the reasons why they haven’t reached the same conclusion. They are able to listen carefully and objectively to the reasoning behind differing opinions.
When most people hear me describe this approach, they typically say, “No problem, I’m open-minded!” But what they really mean is that they’re open to being wrong. True open-mindedness is an entirely different mind-set. It is a process of being intensely worried about being wrong and asking questions instead of defending a position. It demands that you get over your ego-driven desire to have whatever answer you happen to have in your head be right. Instead, you need to actively question all of your opinions and seek out the reasoning behind alternative points of view.
Its been an interesting journey – for 17 years I lived with parents. There were frequent announcements (parents screaming at me) , magical self cleaning rooms & a supply of food. For the next 5 years or so I lived in my own room. The room was about two lunges wide & there were corners for clothes, books and other stuff! Toilets still had self cleaning & food was available quite easily. For the next 4 years I lived with other people – complaining often about their habits and also complaining about their complaints about my habits.
At each phase I had human interaction , but suddenly I live alone now. A huge place – all to myself. I’ve built in the auto cleaning with the “maid module”. Food gets served thanks to a hobby. But the solitude is new.
At first a challenge, but now I am starting to enjoy it. Reading, relaxing and treating it as thinking space!
Yesterday I went for a trek to Sinhgad – a fort that was a strategic possession because of its location between other important strongholds. It was considered one of the hardest forts to capture and witnessed great wars (including people scaling the fort walls using monitor lizards).
Today though, it is the trek up to the fort that appears to pull crowds. Loads of people scaled up the fort and the trek takes 45mins to 60 mins up to about 4000 ft elevation. There were perhaps two highlights to the trek. The first was a gentleman named Ghokale who appeared pretty old and many people knew him. He was quite the character – not afraid of sharing his views with people who looked at him strangely. Once he got to the peak he then started singing loudly – very soothing when mixed with the strong winds at the height of the peak. The highlight though was a his wisdom to the tired trekkers perhaps quarter his age – “Don’t sit down, keep going”.
The other highlight happened on our return journey. We were scared to come down the slope, so we took the easy road that is used by vehicles. Unfortunately, as we discovered a few minutes (40-50 mins) later, this was a supremely long way down. So we asked a shop keeper for the shorter way down (We had just passed up the shortest – which was the same path we used to go up). She told us to walk through the forest . Given there aren’t too many signboards in a forest – we asked how we would find our direction. She asked us to look up to the telephone tower and keep walking towards to it.
The combination of Ghokale & the shop keepers words were pretty deep… or perhaps those are just my tired legs speaking!
View from the top – across the Western Ghats & Khadakwasala lake
The trekking paths – rocky, muddy & crowded
The way back down – look at the tower and keep walking.
Deliberate practice is spoken about as a way to help build your skills. It is the routine that great sporstmen and musicians go through. It can be used to build any skill across work and personal life. Deliberate practice must be: intentional, aimed at improving performance, designed for your current skill level, combined with immediate feedback and repetitious.
PDCA is a common term in manufacturing industries – Plan, Do , Check, Act. It goes along with the agile methodology (and of course scrum). It is an iterative four-step management method used in business for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products.
I find the similarities uncanny. Both aim for small improvements – but continuous improvements.Both depend heavily on great feedback cycles. There is more… just wrapping my head around it.
A powerful speaker knows that speaking is not about the idea, but it is about the emotion. He knows the audience won’t always remember what they heard, but will remember how they felt.
Speaking has its bounds – it is very hard to convey a complex idea with speech. That’s where essays, mails & presentations come to play.
Writing is a great way to express ideas but harder to express emotions. Speaking is vice versa.
In most daily situation, we do a mix of the two.
Point is – Think of what you are trying to do, find the purpose. Then use the right medium for your purpose.
A week ago I ate at a place and while settling the bill- they were short of 5 rupees. So they gave me a slip that d give me a 5 rupees discount the next time I eat there.
The second incident is when I ate at another restaurant, again the place had to give me 5 rupees. Instead they gave me 10, and asked me to return 5 the next time I go there.
Now, in the first scenario I get 5 rupees if I return and in the second I pay 5 when I return. I’ve not gone back to the first place for a week, but I want to go to the second very soon.
Wonders of trust maybe?
I’ve been interacting with a lot of new joiners and I realize that we do hiring fairly wrong.
The job is sold as the thing to do and the company as the place to be. People show up and find they were sold a heaven that doesn’t exist. The bad thing is this means the new employee hates the company within the first few weeks. I like how zappos pays employees to quit in the first couple of months. That might work.
When there are new joiners, the team doesn’t always have a fixed onboarding plan. The new joiner feels lost for a while and this gives the impression that the team doesn’t care. Should human resources check in with all new joiners after 3 months?
Finally, I think it’s important to not just tell the new joiner what their job is, but also tell them why they were hired. Why did we put in effort and take the risk on you? I think this will give a better foundation to a hopefully – very long relationship.
I am opinionated, I often run into disagreements. I learnt early that being open to a discussion is important to then resolve the disagreement.
What I am slowly realizing is the importance of helping the other party remain open. The other person may have a very differnt personality and find it hard to remain open to a discussion. However, I am realizing that I can play a huge role in allowing the other person to remaining open.
Remaining open is important to resolving a disagreement. Also important is my ability to help the other party remain open.
Do you have other views?
Learning Antenna 