Hello! I’m glad you landed up here. So far this blog has been focused on the crypto space & the occasional (okay, one) stream of consciousness.
That changes now.
Starting with this one, I’m going to publish a weekly newsletter every Wednesday. I promise to write 15 of these at least.
What - It’ll have 3 sections
An idea of the week: An idea that inspired me
Book Notes: An insight from a book(s) i’m reading
Favorites : I’ll share a tweet, long form post and video i watched and enjoyed last week
Motivation - why am I doing this?
For myself : I recently re-realised how much I love writing & how much it helps me learn. For the last couple of weeks I’d decided to write a lot more but I’d end up procrastinating about what, when, how to write. Making this committment is a forcing function that helps eliminate all of this and help me build the habit.
Building an audience : For as long as I can remember, I despised “personal branding”. I thought it was fake, I was too cool for it & I’d just “do my job well” and that’s all that mattered. Over the last 6 months I’ve changed this perspective - courtsey of posts like the great online game by PackyM. I now see this as a tool to reach out to like minded people (like you dear reader) & play this game with.
Engage - if you’re here, I’d love to hear from you !
Tell me what you thought about this post ,what would you like to learn about , what brought here , anything at all…
With that, let’s dive into edition #1 of over simplified…
Idea of the week
“It’s perfectly possible that moving closer to the goal actually does not increase the value of the objective function, even if the move brings us closer to the objective”
- Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned - Stanley & Lehman (2015) via Olly.eth mirror
I came across this idea in this post on DAOs by olly.eth, shared in the superteam discord by ddude.
While the authors has presented this idea in the context of DAOs, I personally find it broadly applicable. We’re conditioned to think & operate in linear incremental steps. If you look all the way back to how schooling is structured - your final grade is a simple sum of all the exams you’ve taken. There’s no incentive or reward for depth and exploration.
This is not to say that taking small steps is bad. Quite the opposite. In everything I’ve tried, I’ve always found that smaller steps is the only way to get anything done. What’s unique about this way of thinking is, to not expect each step to get you visibily or measurably closer to your end goal. Instead think about effort in three parts
Input: You have full control over this, e.g. writing 15 editions of this newsletters
Output: 15 editions of this newsletter are published,with quality content & on schedule.
Outcome: 1,500 people have read this newsletter by the 15th edition.
I can’t control #3, I don’t know whether it will happen or not. But if it does, it unlikely that it’ll be a 100 new people reading each edition. Execution becomes effective by focusing on 1 & 2. You do need to have eyes on whether you’re generally getting closer to #3 or not but you can’t back-calculate or “waterfall” 🤮 it.
Book Notes
We could never have evolved to be rational - it makes you weak
- Alchemy
I’ve just started reading Alchemy, as the headline suggests it talks about the power of “non-sense” ideas. I’ve come across this idea on multiple occasions in the past, but never fully processed it.
A very practical manifestation of this idea is to listen to & nuture your intuition. Think of the rational mind as one of many tools available to you. This isn’t a call to give into dogma blindly. But a reminder to not give into the dogma of rationality blindly either.
Favourites
Here’s a curation of a tweet, post & video I enjoyed this week -
Tweet
Post
Advice he wishes he knew before, from Kevin Kelly on his 70th birthday.
Video
That’s all for this first edition. Thank you for making it this far, if you liked it pls share it with your friends & family. And subscribe for the upcoming editions along with some high-quality writing on crypto, product management, startups, etc.
Cover image source : https://unsplash.com/s/photos/rocket-launch
Great read! Love the reference from Alchemy. Looking forward to more of these each week.
Aditya OP!
loved the Ideas, looking forward to more of this.