📚 #247 Deregulation and Civil Services Reforms, Saloni’s Guide to Data Visualization, Stop Worrying About Survivorship Bias, Two Stages of Mastery

The Making of Changi, Default Settings, Tiny Arrow on Car’s Fuel Gauge, Water-Tasting & more

Jan 26, 2026

Hello,

Welcome to Stay Curious #247.

This week went by in a blur. I was in Oman for a company offsite. Fancy, right? The prep, the offsite itself, and everything after it are still catching up with me. I am yet to fully catch my breath.

It is rare these days for me to work on just one thing in a week. This was one of those rare exceptions. And I am not complaining. I need such breaks from routine once in a while. This one image from Oman is what has stayed with me, along with a long list of todos.

Today’s curation is a little shorter. My notes and snippets are lighter too. I am easing my way back into rhythm.

For now, here is a quick look at what I have for you today.

Without further ado, let’s get started…

🇮🇳 Deregulation and Civil Services Reforms

I had not heard Manish Sabharwal before. But when this podcast episode showed up in Rohit Kaul’s feed, I had to give it a try.

The challenges he talks about, both for businesses and for individuals, felt very relatable. That kept me listening till the end. I have very limited exposure to topics like deregulation and the inner workings of Indian civil services, so a lot of what he covered was new and genuinely interesting for me.

A few snippets:

On bottleneck to entrepreneurship and risk taking

“The only explanation is that the premature load‑bearing on entrepreneurs was created by thousands of acts, thousands of rules, compliances, notifications — but more importantly by a toxic regulatory mentality which thinks of things as ‘prohibited till permitted’… Innovation, by definition, has to be permissionless.”

And also,

“There are 26,410 ways for an employer to go to jail… Not many people are in jail, so you have to ask yourself: is this criminal provision really working?”

On licenses:

Licences should be rare public‑good exceptions — national security, public health, safety, environment. Everything else should be self‑registration. All licences should be perpetual; why do you need a licence every year?

Listen or Watch: Deregulation, Civil Service Reform & India’s Growth Story

Manish has a sharp way of telling stories and giving structure to his ideas. Once he gets going, it is hard to tune out. I am going to explore more of his work to understand his thinking better. If you have any good recommendations or links, do share.

📊 Saloni’s Guide to Data Visualization

For most of us, working on charts to explain an insight or back a claim is not an everyday task. We often think this belongs to data visualization experts.

But tools aside, it does not have to be that way. Like any other form of expression, good charts start with a few fundamental questions. Get those right, and chances are you will do a solid job, even without fancy tools.

Saloni Dattani captures this well in her guide. Her examples draw heavily from Our World in Data, which makes the post a great show and tell.

Read: Saloni’s guide to data visualization

If you work with data, this will be a genuinely useful read. If you do not, it is still a great reference for how clear thinking and good storytelling can come together through charts.

📖 Stop Worrying About Survivorship Bias

When you read history, survivorship bias is a real problem. And yet, many respected business leaders and investors swear by business history. They read biographies, old annual reports, and long forgotten case studies. They spend serious time on it.

So how do you reconcile this?

This is exactly the question Cedric Chin explores in a Commoncog piece. His writing has become one of my favorite sources for deep case studies. The value is not just in the lessons, but in the stories and patterns that emerge over time. I think of this as collecting the dots. You trust that these dots will matter someday, even if you do not know how yet.

Read: Stop worrying about Survivorship Bias with this one weird trick

As Cedric puts it:

But in an ill-structured domain, it is the cases that are important, and the concepts that are secondary. Or, more accurately, experts read cases to collect fragments, and these fragments may be recombined to help with sensemaking in new, novel cases.
And so here we have our answer. Survivorship bias doesn’t matter if you’re reading cases as instantiations of concepts.

That is the answer. Survivorship bias matters far less if you read cases as concrete examples of broader ideas.

If your goal is to collect dots, then read history. Look for patterns. Take notes that point toward them. Over time, this habit will leave you better prepared than most people who approach every problem as if it has never happened before.

🧑‍🎨 Two Stages of Mastery

The multi-passionate and multi-disciplinary are often thought of as identities and ways to express one’s being. However if our aim is excellence then they are better viewed as stages of development with the multi-passionate stage coming first and the multi-disciplinary stage coming second.

In simple terms:

Multi-passionate is driven by curiosity. It is the phase of open exploration across many subjects.

Multi-disciplinary is driven by focus and discipline. It is the phase where you move toward excellence.

We too have a radiance and curiosity that goes out in all directions. Which is why finding and mastering our own instruments of expression allows us to do the work we’re born to do at the celestial height it asks of us.

Great masters usually pass through both stages. The first fuels the second. But this is hard to see when you are inside it. The joy of open ended exploration can feel so good that it becomes a trap. Without focus, it can limit the journey toward mastery and toward building something meaningful.

Read: The two stages of mastery for those with many passions

[via Sarthak’s newsletter]

🇸🇬 The Making of Changi

Changi and Lee Kuan Yew’s stories are always fascinating, so when I saw a piece by Trung Phan, I had to check it out. And it did not disappoint.

Read: Lee Kuan Yew and the Making of Changi

The piece pulls together several anecdotes from From Third World to First. Each one is a quiet lesson in statecraft and long term thinking. .

“Visiting CEOs used to call on me before they made their investment decisions. I thought the best way to convince them was to ensure that the roads from the airport to their hotel and to my office were neat and spruce, lined with shrubs and trees.
When they drove into the Istana domain, they would see right in the heart of the city a green oasis, 90 acres of immaculate rolling lawns and woodland, and nestling between them a nine-hole golf course.
Without a word being said, they would know that Singaporeans were competent, disciplined, and reliable, a people who would learn the skills they required soon enough.” (P. 62)

Discipline. That single word captures so much of the Singapore story for me. It demands money, energy, and patience. The outcome, though, is something entirely different.

📖 The Default Settings

And it’s released automatically, in both reading and eating. You don’t have to search it out. The good stuff (the meaning in the text, the pleasure in the eating) just rises up to meet you in that extra time you give it. Slowing down, and offering more time to the act of consumption, immediately increases reading comprehension (and eating comprehension).
Both are analogous to slowing down while you vacuum a carpet. If you pass the vacuum head too quickly, you miss half the dirt. Slow down, and you can hear how much more grit is sent skittering up the tube. The suction and bristles are working, but they need more time to do their work fully, to draw up the deeper-lying stuff.

Read: Maybe the default settings are too high

A little philosophical, but the idea is simple. Consumption and enjoyment do not always move at the same speed. Slowing down often means consuming less, and enjoying things more.

[via YC Newsletter]

✨ Little Moments of Joy

Also known as “Everything else…”. The small things that brought warmth, sparked joy, and made me appreciate life a little more.

That tiny arrow on your car’s fuel gauge. The WSJ byline alone is reason enough to click: “On a rainy day in Detroit, a Ford engineer got confused, then soaked, and inspired. It took decades before he got any credit.” (archived here)
I’ve always loved great picture books. Good Night Moon is one of those timeless ones. This NYT piece takes us to the history of (modern) picture books. Some fascinating stories, I must say! (archived here)
My sparkling and surreal experience as a Water-Tasting Judge. If the title is not tempting enough, here is one more reason. It is a Walrus piece.