Quitting status games

The process of dislodging myself from these games began with paying more attention to who my true models were.

If you want to know what your calling is, what will satisfies you, what you want to be, pay attention to whom you admire. Then ask, why I admire them? Or what qualities I admire in them? That is a good start.

I worshipped their agency, their self-assuredness, their confidence that doing what felt right was the path that made the most sense—even if it didn’t make much sense to others, even if it meant foregoing some impressive thing that they “could” do, something others said was the Right path.

Only people who quit status games are those that realize they have agency. Most people are playing some form of status games - impressing someone else.

My friend P.K. Khu₹ana said: "You think, people are impressed by you driving an expensive car. People are not. They are impressed by the car. It could be a monkey driving the car."

I suddenly remembered I had agency: the ability to* decide what I wanted to do, not just what everyone else told me was Desirable.*

We all have what it takes to do what we really desire or to go after our calling. But we are afraid.

*> *the point of optionality was to use it—not to continue accruing more options indefinitely, but to start choosing the options that felt most right to me.

Options expire. When you exercise your option, they multiply. They give you more options.

**> **I was capable, I knew that. but I didn’t yet realize that capability wasn’t an obligation. Just because I could, doesn’t mean I needed to. True capability meant having real options.

This is a hard lesson at least for me. Capability is not an obligation. Capability is an option.

the only definition of smart that really resonates with me is: the ability to get what you actually want out of life.

This is the line why I read the full article. Smartness is the ability to get what you actually want out of life. Not playing games that other deem important.

*> *the product of learning, of optionality, of mentorship, of time in front of “important people”, are very marketable products to young people hungry to succeed, grow, and win the games they’re playing.

earning them comes with significant costs—the most painful of which is:** betraying yourself.**

Every venture and pursuit has a cost. Know the cost of your pursuit. And be willing to pay it.

src: https://read.mindmine.xyz/p/status
#tir #cxoskill #insight

Even being a small player in a winning team is better than a star player in a losing team.

Don't confuse winning team with large team. Joining Google or Infosys now doesn't make you part of a winning team. May be when they were small, yes. But not now.

I have been lucky that I've been part of few winning teams. I have also worked with some of the managers who had hunger in their soul. I learned a lot from them.

Now I can get a lot done in short time, because of all that training.

#cxoskill #career

Compound interests are interesting beyond the field of finance

Simple Interest = principal x time x interest

The interest earned each year remains the same because the variables—principal, time, and interest rate—do not change.

In contrast, compound interest adds the accrued interest to the following year's principal. So, both the principal and the interest increase each year. Over a long period, compound interest grows exponentially higher than simple interest.

This principle applies beyond finance, including in career development. In calculating interest, three factors are considered: principal, time, and rate. The factors for calculating interest for your career are: who you are, time, and skills you acquire. If you do not change who you are and only acquire new skills without self-development, your growth will be nominal and may plateau over time.

However, if you invest in self-development—learning about yourself, improving emotional intelligence, mastering negotiations, breaking personal or societal limitations—and acquire multiple skills such as public speaking and technical expertise, your returns will compound annually. Over time, the difference between someone who follows this compounding model and someone who does not is exponential.

People who apply compounding principles in their lives often appear lucky due to their rapid growth. This concept is applicable in all areas of life: marriage, raising children, career advancement, and social networking. By applying compounding principles broadly, you will experience significant growth in all aspects of your life.

#luck #cxoskill #insight #career

Can Do vs. Should Do by John Cutler

1️⃣represents the valuable things that we can't work on right now.
2️⃣is valuable AND possible, but only with a lot of unsustainable sacrifice. Leads to burnout.
3️⃣work is valuable, possible, and within a comfortable "can" range.
4️⃣ might be work on the cusp
5️⃣is the "low hanging fruit" box. May not be the MOST valuable but reasonably valuable
7️⃣ feels valuable locally, but is not valuable in the big picture
8️⃣ work is the easy stuff we do because we're blocked.
6️⃣ & 9️⃣are rarely attempted.

#cxoskill #insight #visual

AI Is Adding to Employees' Workload and Burning Them Out
But executives still think it's going to be a magic bullet.

I don't know how much of this study is true. But anecdotally this resonates with what I see among employees and CXOs.

C-suiters expected AI to be a magic bullet for their employees' productivity...CEOs rush to deploy these technologies

If they are bullish, you would expect that they would have training programs and strategic thought to deploy AI into their ops.

No.

They are just bullish.

only a quarter of the C-suiters surveyed said their companies had AI training programs set up, and only 13 percent had adequate strategies in place to make those sorts of prospective gains happen

So what happens when CXOs don't provide training but have a clear-cut plan?

81 percent of them acknowledged to Upwork that they've increased employee demands over the past year.

So there is increased demands on the employees but without accompanying training.... I wonder where this leads to...

71 percent of full-time employees surveyed said they're burnt out.

src: https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-adding-work-study

#gptusage #cxoskill

• Can your solution live with a 90-95% accuracy? Deploy AI
• If not, don't go for AI. You'll have more headache than you need

#gptusage #devnote #cxoskill

Why Coaches Fail

Most technical-skills coaches become coaches by accident. They excel at their work, teach colleagues, and then are encouraged to teach others, eventually becoming coaches. However, few achieve success for several reasons.

Initially, these coaches have an easily reachable market through friends and acquaintances, leading to word-of-mouth growth. Their content is good, they earn some extra money, and they are satisfied. But they struggle to expand beyond this initial network and often halt their business.

Another reason is that many coaches have a steady primary income. They treat coaching or selling digital products as a side business. When faced with challenges, they prioritize their main job over improving their coaching business.

Additionally, many create content based on their past experiences rather than current market needs. As new generations emerge, these coaches fail to update their material and lose relevance.

The biggest issue is underestimating the difficulty of building a business. It involves more than creating YouTube videos or PDFs; it requires understanding marketing, conducting market research, engaging with potential customers, and managing tax structures. Many are lured by the promise of passive income but fail to realize the hard work involved.

Building a business demands consistency and persistence. These factors contribute to why many technical skills coaches do not succeed in their ventures.

#insight #coaching #buildinpublic #cxoskill

Conflict of priorities and desires calls up decision making skills early in the morning.

Have a nice weather after a loooong time. Want to go jogging. Heart also wants to do push-ups that I have started to do.

Also want to write abt my experiment with llms to analyse my stock investments.

Can’t do all at the same time.

🤔

#fitness #self #cxoskill #decisionmaking

Jeff Bezos is a master communicator. His shareholder letters provide valuable insights into effective business communication. Here is a lesson in communication from just one paragraph of a 1998 shareholder letter.

We predict the next three and a half years will be even more exciting. We are working to build a place where tens of millions of customers can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online. It is truly Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute our business plan well, it remains Day 1 for Amazon.com. Given what’s happened, it may be difficult to conceive, but we think the opportunities and risks ahead of us are even greater than those behind us. We will have to make many conscious and deliberate choices, some of which will be bold and unconventional. Hopefully, some will turn out to be winners. Certainly, some will turn out to be mistakes.

You can analyze this paragraph in three layers.

Bezos outlines three traits of successful CEOs in one paragraph: forward-thinking, taking risks, and communicating concisely.

Your writing will improve when you read and reread such letters.

#cxoskill #writing #bezoswriting #annualletter

I am getting adjusted to a changing rhythm in my #writing routine.

Instead of writing a draft first, I record using audiopen.
Then I use WordTune to edit the first edit.
I feed the modified text to #chatgpt and ask it to be an editor (I ask to keep 'Flesch score of 65-70')

Just finished one essay for my #cxoskill

Happy about this new routine.