Satyajit Rout

All Articles

July 2024

  • 09-07-2024

    174 - Do you work in an organization where everybody works one level lower than they should?

    Micromanagement tends to roll down. Everybody works one level lower than they should—this is the cascade of micromanagement. Your boss’s boss meddles in your boss’s work; your boss does your work; and you do your report’s work; and so on. ...

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June 2024

  • 21-06-2024

    173 - The negotiating trick few talk about

    Negotiations are won by whoever cares less. We know this in our bones, yet tune it out too often. ...

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  • 11-06-2024

    172 - The difference between informing and evoking

    This newsletter has talked about the difference between feedback and observations. Feedback, especially in professional settings, has got the air of walking on eggshells. It is hard to get it right and harder for it to be consistently effective. ...

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May 2024

  • 11-05-2024

    171 - Why is it so hard to say NO?

    The difficulty in saying NO is a common one. I have family who’ve never refused a dinner invitation. Friends who would rip out a fingernail than turn someone down. ...

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April 2024

  • 21-04-2024

    170 - Essence of strategy, rationalization, and a question on processing emotions

    For anyone who has worked in Business Development or in Ops, they would be familiar with a tension that simmers all through the year. ...

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  • 11-04-2024

    169 - Feedback, observation, and coaching

    Over the last six months or so, I’ve clocked hours doing, what I’ve come to learn is, internal and external coaching. At work, I’ve done consistent hours of mentoring/coaching and I’ve been lucky enough to have a few paid coaching clients. ...

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  • 05-04-2024

    168 - Are you solving a higher class of problems today compared to yesterday?

    No matter who you are or what you do, there’s a consequence to solving problems. It is inevitable. The problems you solve today will create opportunities tomorrow, no doubt. They will also bring you a new set of problems. ...

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March 2024

  • 21-03-2024

    167 - Skeptical and open-minded - operating in two modes at the workplace

    At some point in my job, I started functioning in two modes. ...

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  • 18-03-2024

    166 - Learning from my younger selves

    My eyes are shut. I’m wide awake in my head. I know it. I also know that at this moment before day break, as the darkness bleeds under my eyelids, on this already warm summer morning, I’m dead and buried. Before I’ve wrapped my fingers around my phone on the bedside table, I know. It’s another night of broken sleep, another one of those broken R90 sleep cycles as all those podcasts say. I open my eyes to check why. ...

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  • 14-03-2024

    165 - What's the big deal about being independent?

    Seth Godin says in a recent episode on his podcast Akimbo that every big problem that seems to have been solved solo has actually been solved by a non-coordinated group. Even Einstein, Godin cites as an example, stood on the shoulders of giants before him to come up with a new paradigm for spacetime. ...

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  • 11-03-2024

    164 - Three questions for your work and life

    Here are three ideas to consider and three questions to ask yourself this week: ...

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  • 07-03-2024

    163 - What does your report likely mean when she says she wants to do new things?

    Several times in my career, I’ve heard this and I’ve said this: “I want to do new things; I want to grow; I don’t want to just keep doing the same thing again and again.”...

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  • 04-03-2024

    162 - Laziness is exhaustion

    A client of mine who’s a clinician recently told me she feels happy any time her first patient of the day (8am slot) cancels, but right after she feels guilty for feeling good about not working....

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  • 01-03-2024

    161 - SMART goals are doing your team harm

    SMART goals can be counterproductive for your team or business unit. This runs contrary to popular belief. ...

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February 2024

  • 27-02-2024

    160 - “Do you think trying to adopt a leadership style that’s not your natural style could backfire?”

    Last week, I published a piece on managing a transition in your career: role change, job change, or both. The piece made the point that the optimal leadership style is situation-dependent. A go-go-go leader who can see the firm through a...

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  • 24-02-2024

    159 - Tracking a lion, or a life

    We adopted a rescue a couple of months ago. Before, we had Scotch, a British cocker spaniel, for fourteen years. He lived a full life, giving us no trouble with his eating or with his docile temperament....

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  • 21-02-2024

    158 - Managing yourself during a transition

    When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he swooped in like a hero. He didn’t wait to assess things, didn’t talk to the old-timers to get a sense of the history, he only saw fires that he wanted to put out....

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  • 18-02-2024

    157 - Searching for Originality

    When Thomas P F Hoving, the late celebrated art historian, writer, and Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art—the fourth largest art museum in the world, was a second-year undergrad art student (the Americans call it sophomore year)...

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  • 15-02-2024

    156 - How to spend your time in the first 90 days

    In a new organization or a new role or both, how should you spend your learning time during your onboarding? ...

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  • 12-02-2024

    155- Just knowledge does not change behavior

    If you're anything like me, you're probably consistently late with your tax investment declarations or your reimbursement proof submissions. I ignore reminders, breeze past deadlines, and am generally notorious with these...

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  • 09-02-2024

    154 - Two stories about humility training

    On Wednesday, I met a friend who was visiting town. Over breakfast, he shared a story with me. ...

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  • 06-02-2024

    153 - What we want from a job

    In what we want most from a job there’s a paradox: we don’t know what we want more—great work or a great work culture? ...

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  • 03-02-2024

    152 The “even more” strategy

    One year, at our annual offsite, the company leadership shared the mantra for the year: the Genius of the AND. ...

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January 2024

  • 31-01-2024

    151 Would you rather be disciplined or devoted?

    Why do we value one at the cost of the other? ...

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  • 28-01-2024

    150 When working for free makes sense

    Why working for free during an internship makes sense ...

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  • 25-01-2024

    149 - Making the other person run out of things to say

    The Drama Triangle and our roles in it ...

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  • 22-01-2024

    148 - Head without heart is a logic bully

    The boss, a marketing director, has been pulled into an urgent one-on-one by his brand manager. The boss’s day is already packed but he’s made an exception for her....

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  • 19-01-2024

    147 - Shepard tone - how to run multiple projects in parallel

    I’m working on a longer piece and that’s keeping me occupied far longer than what I had accounted for. I think there’s enough potential juice in that squeeze so I aim to keep going. Meanwhile, here’s a thought that’s ready for you....

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  • 13-01-2024

    146 - Why is the quest for mastery embarrassing?

    The human cost of pursuing mastery: The hard apprenticeships of Robert Caro and Leonardo da Vinci ...

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  • 10-01-2024

    145 - Why AI may not leave us jobless, why Will Hunting should not lay bricks, and why Virat Kohli should stay away from aerobics

    from aerobics ...

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  • 07-01-2024

    144 - The power of putting first things first

    After Christopher Nolan had finished the script for Oppenheimer, he first took it to his longtime visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson. The fulcrum for the story, as Nolan calls it, was the Trinity Test. Nolan, as always, didn’t...

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  • 04-01-2024

    142 - The casually curious die early at the altar of pragmatism

    It’s a December afternoon. I’m sitting in my living room, my straightened-out legs making a bridge between the couch and the coffee table, with the laptop balanced on it, when the thought occurs to me: I’ve been here before....

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  • 01-01-2024

    141 - The inefficiency is the point

    Friction and intentionality ...

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December 2023

  • 29-12-2023

    140 - Be the only, not the best—the overlooked lesson in building a career

    I’m sitting at my desk in Mr. Ambrose’s class and I’m annoyed. I have before me a blank page I have to fill up. It’s only halfway through the term in grade nine, yet I feel like I’ve been here this term a million times already....

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  • 26-12-2023

    139 - Why do we hire talent like we’re buying a boring car?

    How to reduce the problem of workforce homogeneity ...

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  • 23-12-2023

    139 - What you didn’t know about your emotions

    How to get your brain to reconstruct reality the way you want it to ...

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  • 20-12-2023

    138 - What causes success?

    ‘And so you start to wonder—what correlates the most to success—team, product, or market? Or, more bluntly, what causes success? And, for those of us who are students of startup failure—what’s most dangerous: a bad team, a weak...

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  • 17-12-2023

    137 - Managing how people see you at work

    Setting your narrative and course-correcting ...

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  • 14-12-2023

    136 - Akbar, don’t worry about Birbal

    How to overcome the loss of your domain-specific expert in your org or team ...

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  • 11-12-2023

    135 - Second-Order Thinking: The Seen and Oh, the Unseen (Part 3 of 3)

    Part 3 of 3 in series on Visualization Techniques in Decision-Making ...

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  • 08-12-2023

    134 - Visualization Techniques in Decision-Making (Part 2 of 3)

    Right then, on to a new week and a new year. Two weeks ago, in issue #132, I wrote about a trait that’s unique to us humans among all animal species: mental time travel. We can move back and forth in time, imagine possibilities, and...

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  • 05-12-2023

    133 - 2024 - a year in preview

    Writing like cooking, learning like playing, and being helpful ...

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  • 02-12-2023

    130 - How about a career with (probably) the worst feedback loop?

    If the accuracy and frequency of the feedback loop came written on the label of the career you have chosen, would you have made the same choice?...

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November 2023

  • 29-11-2023

    129 - Why should we believe in the wisdom of the crowd? And when should we not?

    1906. Plymouth, England. Country fair. Some livestock and poultry show, actually. A fat ox. A Joe-Biden-old statistician has an itchy idea that he wishes to scratch. But it’s not easy to pull off what he has in mind. So he comes up with a...

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  • 26-11-2023

    128 - How to Improve Your Ideas ~~By Working Harder Alone~~

    I outline the process of improving your ideas at work. This is a non-negotiable skill for knowledge workers in any creative market. We all have to build an air-tight business case for things we believe will make a difference. If we...

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  • 23-11-2023

    126 - The Stories We Tell Ourselves

    Recording of last weekend’s session on decision frames ...

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  • 20-11-2023

    125 - Nine Tiny Thoughts from September and October

    These tiny thoughts—most of them the words and ideas of luminaries in their fields—cover the themes of cognition, perception, and intuition; holding an opinion; and working with others....

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  • 17-11-2023

    124 - How to Escape Being a Rich and Wretched Entrepreneur

    Rethinking Rules: The Netflix Approach to Building an Innovation Culture ...

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  • 14-11-2023

    123 - Six rules that I follow as personal commandments

    Part 1 of 2 on how to use rules to your advantage ...

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  • 11-11-2023

    121 - Getting Better by Goofing up (Intentionally)

    How to Get Better by Going against Company Policy ...

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  • 08-11-2023

    120 - Two Kinds of Risk, Four Kinds of Luck and _That_ Worst Outcome

    Managing your odds for career success ...

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  • 05-11-2023

    118 - Risk and Expected Value and the Mistakes We Make with Them

    When making a decision, people tend to think too much of risk and not enough about the expected value. ...

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  • 02-11-2023

    117 - Should This, Not Can this, Product be Built?

    Startup-building is hard. New ventures operate in uncertainty. So it is inevitable that there’ll be waste but there are many levels of waste. The trick is to find the most acceptable level of waste by following a lean approach....

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October 2023

  • 30-10-2023

    116 - The slippery slope of hypothesis-less entrepreneurship

    For the last year and across multiple stints before that, I’ve worked toward getting pre-product-market-fit startups (products and services) off the ground....

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  • 27-10-2023

    115 - The Status Quo Trap

    How to reduce the lingering power of the status quo ...

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  • 24-10-2023

    114 - TWO SELVES

    Scotch ...

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  • 21-10-2023

    113 - Is this a success or a failure—the value of reference points in framing decisions

    This is a now-famous example from a [1984 paper](http://courses.washington.edu/pbafhall/514/514%20Readings/choices%20values%20and%20frames.pdf) by psychologists...

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  • 18-10-2023

    112 - Bargains and Rip-offs

    LI promo: We buy things we may not have use for just because they’re available at a price lower than we expect. We reject perfectly useful things we need simply because we believe their correct price in our judgment should be lower....

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  • 15-10-2023

    111 - Commander’s Intent and That Sweet Spot between Micromanaging and Abandoning

    ‘In a principal-agent model,’ writes Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler in Misbehaving, ‘the principal is the boss, often the owner of a firm, and the agent is someone to whom authority is delegated.’...

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  • 12-10-2023

    109 - Building for the Future: Investment in Loss (Part 2 of 2)

    Last week I asked a question. What do you look for in a hire for your early-stage startup, for your less-than-30-member unit, or for your tiny 0-to-1 unit? We explored ex-Meta and ex-CZI operator [Molly Graham’s...

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  • 09-10-2023

    108 - Building for the Future: The J-Curve or The Stairs? (Part 1 of 2)

    In the middle of 2021, I was heading a small business unit that was building a [smart writing assistant](https://paperpal.com/). The product was to be available as a web app, a plugin, and an online editor. We were...

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  • 06-10-2023

    107 - Chasing Greatness: Shoot for the Moon but Only If You Can Train the Monkey First (Part 2 of 2)

    Henry VIII ruled over England with an iron fist for thirty-six years. For much of the second half of his reign, their king’s foul mood concerned Parliament. Word went that Henry VIII’s famed temper was down to leg ulcers. Painful and...

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  • 03-10-2023

    106 - Two proven ways of chasing greatness (Part 1 of 2)

    You have permission to follow your curiosity (Part 1 of 2) ...

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September 2023

  • 30-09-2023

    105 - The Art of Learning

    I faced a crisis at sixteen when I entered junior college. I was thrust into a period of intense preparation for competitive exams for undergrad admissions. A ranker through school, I was unsettled by the depth in competition. I...

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  • 27-09-2023

    104 - Odds and ends

    What happens in groups happens to individuals as well ...

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  • 24-09-2023

    103 - The Truly Ambitious Hate False Progress

    If you have worked in operations (or taken an operations research course in business school), it is likely that you would’ve heard about the theory of constraints....

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  • 21-09-2023

    102 - Keep calm and be like Van Gogh

    The perils of making up your mind too early ...

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  • 18-09-2023

    101 - Great leaders enjoy the deepest level of our permission

    Learning permission marketing from an ex train ticket examiner ...

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  • 15-09-2023

    100 - Opportunity Costs: Have you thought of what you’re giving up?

    Intrinsic motivation in a species is said to be correlated to the size of the brain relative to the body. Bigger the brain relative to the body, more driven is the species to exercise it for fun or for challenging things. That explains...

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  • 12-09-2023

    99 - ‘Real options’ thinking: Win the right, lose the obligation

    (why firms are better off thinking like venture capitalists) ...

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  • 09-09-2023

    98 - How to build better decision frames

    No frame is complete. So, don’t stop at just one. Mix and match. This essay shows you 5 ways to build new frames: ...

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  • 06-09-2023

    97 - Do your thinking frames serve you well?

    Some ways of looking at the world are unhelpful. One of them is imagining the world as opposing forces in a competing frame. I win, you lose. Locked forever in perfect competition....

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  • 03-09-2023

    96 - How to move from frame blindness to frame control

    Imagine you’re one of the best at what you do. You get paid in millions. And suddenly you get dumped. You’re not fired but your services are no longer integral to the success of your team. If you haven’t guessed already, this happens in...

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August 2023

  • 31-08-2023

    95 - Practical leadership—lessons from…

    Takeaways: 1. As a leader, it's ok to want to be on top of things. Don't let that make you anxious. Set up a system for fixing...

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  • 28-08-2023

    94 - Looking beyond dead ends

    More than a decade ago I was at a company offsite where I was introduced to the phrase ‘The Genius of the AND and the Tyranny of the OR.’ I believe it was from Jim Collins’ Built to Last....

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  • 25-08-2023

    93 - How to resolve the stickiest conflicts

    Every business leader, executive, senior manager, and founder has faced this question at some point, yet coverage of the topic is full of tropes. At least, I couldn’t find much beyond that in popular literature. So I looked deeper....

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  • 22-08-2023

    92 - How did Iceland get its teenagers to swap the high of drugs and alcohol for the high of sports?

    Plus: Why do organizations stop learning? ...

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  • 19-08-2023

    91 - The future is uncertain but in us we have a key

    The paradox ...

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  • 16-08-2023

    90 - Power laws

    Doing something the best way possible is 10X better than doing something in just a good way ...

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  • 13-08-2023

    89 - Decision categorization

    The beauty of having a sound framework for decision-making is that it can clarify your approach to work both at a day-to-day and long-term level....

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  • 10-08-2023

    88 - Two principles I aim to follow moving forward:

    The way to a (wo)man’s mind is through stories. ...

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  • 07-08-2023

    87 - Habit-building 15: Cashing out > Cashing in

    I’ve been facing a challenge that you may be familiar with. The question of whether or not to stop mid-flow. ...

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  • 04-08-2023

    86 - Habit-building 14: Building a habit MVP

    Product managers and designers are obsessed with reducing friction for users. It’s not unusual to find them laboring over the smallest detail, like the placement of a text field or the number of clicks to checkout. While to the untrained eye it may seem like making a mountain out of a molehill, the golden rule for any habit-forming product is to make it easy for users. ...

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  • 01-08-2023

    85 - Habit-building 13: The power of a motivation ritual and how TikTok does it

    There’s a TikTok commercial doing the rounds. You may have seen it. It’s called Mystery Apartment Girl. ...

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July 2023

  • 29-07-2023

    84 - Habit-building 12: Habits at scale is culture

    Imagine yourself, young and nervous. You’ve gathered the courage to sidle up to your mother and tell her that you’ve decided to drop out of college to start a T-shirt company. As you try and stitch the words right, your grandmother walks in and chimes “Like mother, like daughter.” Newsflash: Your mother had dropped out of school to start something on her own. Suddenly, a weight is off you. ...

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  • 26-07-2023

    83 - Habit-building 11: Building habits by hooking up with a crew

    My mother believed kite flying to be a dangerous sport. She would go back years to recount all neighborhood accidents when kids, chasing kites, had fallen off rooftops. She also made this clear to my friends. I was thus forced to fly kites by myself on the sly. For those unfamiliar, kite flying needs prep (coating thread with powdered glass) and shared knowledge to succeed (kite-cutting, reeling in). ...

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  • 23-07-2023

    82 - Habit-building 10: How to make a habit attractive

    What is common to Pepsodent, Febreze, and Dettol? ...

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  • 20-07-2023

    81 - Habit-building 9: Design your environment for good habits

    Between my wife and I, we have a top priority. Make the milk sipper disappear. We agree that’s the only way for us to maintain a semblance of mealtimes for our 20-month-old toddler. The alternative is to have the day disrupted several times by the chirp of “Milk! Milk!” because of the sight of a stray milk sipper. ...

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  • 17-07-2023

    80 - Habit-building 8: A surefire way of starting a habit that will last

    I’ve decided to start eating healthy several times in my life. Any success has only lasted a short period. And then, like a rubber band, I’ve snapped right back. This is called regression to the mean but you don’t need to know that to get what I’m talking about. Because we’ve all been there. ...

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  • 14-07-2023

    79 - Habit-building 7: Have you noticed your cue?

    One doesn’t need to be a hypnotist today to convince anyone of the need to brush their teeth. But in the early 1900s, even such a person wasn’t enough. ...

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  • 11-07-2023

    78 - Habit-building 6: Hacking the habit loop

    Every action has a cost and a benefit. You would think that you do something only if the benefit is more than the cost. But I will argue that you’re likely to do something, perhaps consistently too, even when the costs outweigh the benefits. By simply having the benefits first, you can be made to do something that is of net negative value. ...

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  • 08-07-2023

    77 - Habit-building 5: Understanding the habit loop

    You now identify yourself as the person you want to be. With that as the kickstarter for the ‘New Me’ campaign, you start canvassing votes. Every action or behavior aligned with the ‘New Me’ is a vote you need. But with voting we know that even with the best intentions, it is too easy to forget or procrastinate. How do you stop yourself from flaking out? ...

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  • 05-07-2023

    76 - Habit-building 4: Identity is the root; behavior, the flower

    How we see things affects how we feel about things and how we feel about things shapes how we act. ...

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  • 02-07-2023

    75 - Habit-building 3: Use fresh starts to change your identity

    We tend to repeat any routine that makes us happy. Problem is lots of things feel short-term blissful while being long-term harmful. ...

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June 2023

  • 29-06-2023

    74 - Habit-Building 2: What’s your internal flywheel?

    There’s a fundamental problem with how we approach habit-building. This problem arguably is the biggest reason for our failure to meaningfully change. The problem is this: we try to change what we do without first changing who we are. ...

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  • 26-06-2023

    73 - Habit-Building 1: If you want to build a lasting habit, ask yourself: ‘Who am I voting to power?’

    I had good grades through school. Freshman year and they started falling. ‘I’m smart,’ I reassured myself. I waited for things to change. ...

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  • 23-06-2023

    72 - Tilt in decision-making and 3 ways to avoid it

    Imagine a day where you open your inbox to a stinker. It’s the last one in, but there’s no doubt it has to be the first one out. You respond with a suitably charged email to refute the hideous allegations made against you. Thankfully though, from that point on, your day goes on to break even. ...

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  • 20-06-2023

    71 - Three practices to become a better decision-maker

    Here are three simple practices to get you started on the path to better decisions. I’ve distilled them from a wonderful interview of neuroscientist and author Lisa Barrett on The Knowledge Project podcast. ...

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  • 17-06-2023

    70 - Deal with success or have it eat you up.

    It may seem odd to worry about a positive outcome, but that’s exactly what we need to do to avoid being snowed under. ...

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  • 14-06-2023

    69 - Do you have a ‘local foreigner’ in your life?

    I want to tell you about something that you understand but underestimate the value of in making your life better. And it’s not just you. I’m the same. That something is the idea of a ‘local foreigner’. ...

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  • 11-06-2023

    68 - Second-order thinking: carefully count what you see and find out what you don’t

    Second-order thinking makes us imagine the unseen problems and opportunities created by every action we take. ...

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  • 08-06-2023

    67 - Introducing pause in rash decisions - the 10/10/10 method

    If you find yourself making rash decisions or agonizing over decisions, this is for you. ...

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  • 05-06-2023

    66 - Mental models are keyboard shortcuts

    What is different about how technophiles and power users use computers? ...

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  • 02-06-2023

    65 - Second-order thinking for organizational decision-making

    When we think of a decision we look at the effect it may have. And then we stop. But the effect has an effect too. Second-order thinking is thinking about the effect of the effect. The need for it becomes clear when you look at how organizations design incentives. ...

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May 2023

  • 30-05-2023

    64 - The very powerful decision-hygiene habit of time travel

    There’s a basic but powerful decision hygiene habit that few of us practice: time travel. It may sound outlandish, something you thought only happened in sci-fi dramas. It’s anything but. ...

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  • 27-05-2023

    63 - The power of thought experiments in making decisions in uncertainty

    The difference between humans and other species on earth is that we can shift both back and ahead in time, while the rest can only go back. ...

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  • 24-05-2023

    62 - Premortems: why you should kill your dream project to save it

    We agree that talking about failure is healthy, but we forget to think about failing ahead of time. ...

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  • 21-05-2023

    61 - Mental contrasting and the practice of WOOP

    You’re brushing your teeth in the morning and imagining an important presentation later in the day. You picture yourself setting the table for the problem, laying out the options, and winning the audience’s vote for a desired solution. You’ve quick answers and there’s not a moment you go off script. What may actually transpire, the reality of it is something that you don’t consider. ...

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  • 18-05-2023

    60 - The Barbell Strategy for personal decision-making

    Taking a number of small but extreme non-consensus risks means you’ll be wrong and pay a penalty for most of these risky bets. It’ll also mean two other things: ...

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  • 15-05-2023

    59 - The Forbidden Fruit Theory for org decision-making

    Anyone who has had to hire someone will know this. You’ve a shortlist of candidates for a position. You’re undecided. Until you receive word from one of the candidates (let’s call him Dilbert) that he has received another offer. Suddenly, Dilbert’s value shoots up. Why? ...

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  • 12-05-2023

    58 - The young professional’s guide to persuasion

    You’re probably going to scroll past this but if you ever have found getting alignment at work challenging, my Persuasion framework is just for you. ...

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  • 09-05-2023

    57 - Reverse-engineering the present from the future through backcasting

    The problem’s that we plan looking forward but we can see more looking back. ...

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  • 06-05-2023

    56 - Using the Area Under the Curve Framework to categorize risk

    All day, every day, you’re being bombarded with problems that need solving. Here’s a simple framework that’ll help put things in perspective so that you don’t lose sleep over an ant bite or sleep through a snake bite. ...

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  • 03-05-2023

    55 - Changing uncertainty to a risk range

    You’re at the airport. You see a DELAYED against your flight on the display board. What would you think: Should I call and cancel the meeting I’m traveling for OR I’m sure this is nothing? ...

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April 2023

  • 30-04-2023

    54 - Why do we tend to go with the tried and tested for big decisions?

    We often hawk ourselves like potatoes when it matters. Even when we’re zucchini or asparagus or anything but a potato. Why? ...

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  • 27-04-2023

    53 - What’s missing in how we hire?

    Conversations around workplace diversity are often hot potatoes. But they miss a crucial ingredient: the potato. ...

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  • 24-04-2023

    52 - Deciding on normal

    When moving between projects, teams, jobs, careers, have you ever thought about how what is acceptable often changes with the environment. ...

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  • 21-04-2023

    51 - The pain of sticking to commitments: inside and outside views

    I was twenty-five and I was reporting to one of the co-founders. We were launching a new global website and my job was to collate/write news stories and populate the news section. I think it came to around 25 news pieces. I did some math, banking mostly on my writing speed, and committed to a date by which I would be ready with the content for the news section. Let’s just say I fell comfortably short and for a long time after I was worried I had made a fool of myself. ...

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  • 18-04-2023

    50 - The more people I talk to, the more confused I get. Help!

    Ever wondered why this happens? ...

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  • 15-04-2023

    49 - How to earn the freedom to make decisions

    Early career can be a hard time. You’re hungry to create impact. But you get bogged down by ‘micromanagement’, or by having to influence without authority, or even burn yourself out in the process of trying to prove your worth. ...

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  • 12-04-2023

    48 - How to run strategy meetings without authority (aka how to spark disconfirming analysis for better decisions)

    When you’re running any consequential discussion among business leaders, as a young professional you may find yourself in one of two situations: the discussion converges too quickly OR it moves around in circles. The best way for you to drive the discussion is to steer it in the right direction. And that direction is away from preconceived position-taking AND toward open exploration. ...

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  • 09-04-2023

    47 - Better decision-making by asking better questions

    If you had to improve your decision-making and you had 24 hours to do it in, you could do a lot worse than learning to ask better questions. Why? ...

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  • 06-04-2023

    46 - Decision-making with less: constraint is the seed for creativity

    What does decision-making with constraints look like? Here are three high-stakes examples. ...

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  • 03-04-2023

    45 - How to help your team decide in your absence

    Being a new manager shouldn’t stop you from being a good leader. ...

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March 2023

  • 31-03-2023

    44 - How to identify the most important thing

    Some years ago, when my wife and I were beginning to think about homeownership, we spoke with recent homeowner friends. On one such visit, we marveled at the surrounding greenery (Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai). Our friend said that their decision to buy that place was based on a specific need. He said, “We knew what’s outside the walls was outside our control, and what’s inside we could fix. So we picked a location that was going to stay green.” ...

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  • 28-03-2023

    43 - How to change your spotlight to a floodlight

    A common decision-making mistake is that we sincerely believe what we see is all there is. This happens nonconsciously. Before we know it, we’ve turned on our internal spotlight and are looking hard at what it has lit up. ...

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  • 25-03-2023

    42 - Why pros and cons won’t work for me (or you)

    We all have unusual friends. I had a friend who was obsessed with flossing his teeth. No matter what, at the end of the day, he would pull out a piece of thread and run it between his teeth. The thing that didn’t make as much sense was that he was flexible with brushing. There would be days he would forget to brush, or just skip. ...

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  • 22-03-2023

    41 - The perils of problem solving

    There’s an idea that is 10X as effective but only acknowledged a tenth of the time as it should be. I’m talking about avoiding problems–a far better approach to decision-making than solving problems. ...

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  • 19-03-2023

    40 - How to keep options open when waiting to decide

    At the height of the dot-com bubble in the late 90s, Warren Buffett stayed out of the craze and looked like an idiot for a few years until the bubble burst and he was the one sitting on a piggy bank. ...

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  • 16-03-2023

    39 - How to know when to stop gathering evidence

    By now you would know that the 2X2 decision matrix is really a prioritization tool. Its point is to help you strip down what’s on your mind to the most essential. ...

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  • 13-03-2023

    38 - How to know when to take a decision

    As a leader, how do you know how much time you have to make decisions? Should you be quick or should you wait? Could you miss out on opportunities if you’re slow? Or will waiting out bring vital information that could decide the course for you? ...

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  • 10-03-2023

    37 - The secret to solving the right problem? Identify it first.

    If you have a habit of jumping at a problem the moment it is presented to you, if you take pride in being action-oriented, you may want to read on. ...

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  • 07-03-2023

    36 - How we define a problem dictates the solutions we see

    We don’t build cars that are sent to the museum after a trip, but we have always built rockets for single use. ...

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  • 04-03-2023

    35: How to break down a Lead Domino into smaller decisions

    So you have identified what matters most to you and you’ve taken most other things off your plate. You have this (one or more) big consequential-irreversible decision to make. Think of it as your Netflix special. How would you approach it? There are two ways: ...

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  • 01-03-2023

    34 - How to differentiate between decisions using a decision matrix

    I went from being stressed by too many daily decisions to having time for the truly important and big decisions with a simple change. You can learn the basics in two minutes. And like any good system it works everywhere–work and life. ...

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