š Fake ambition, Better decisions, Birds & Frogs and Kayfabes
Ideas from Shreyas Doshi, Todd Simkin, Deb Liu & more
Hi and welcome to the post #123.Ā
Iāve got a couple of podcast episodes in todayās recommendations. Donāt miss them out.Ā
Hereās a quick glimpse to the lineup:
š¤ Fake ambition
ā Making better decisions
š§ Following & breaking rules
š³ļø Tunnels and RNGs
š Emotional support system
š”ļø A super fun gameĀ
And much moreā¦
Letās get started.
1. Fake Ambition
Elizabethās āDear Self; we need to talk about ambitionā is meant to be a counter to poorly universalized advice on ambition. Its premise is based on a couple of fundamental truths that are hardly spoken:
Your life is, in some sense, a series of definitions of success.
Creating your own definition of success feels scary; enacting it feels impossible. The fact that school lays out neat little hoops for you to jump through is a feature.
Itās a fine read, I loved the part about fake ambition. It highlights a critical risk that we all trade with in our ācareerā and ālearning journeysā but are highly ignorant about.
2. Todd Simkin on Making Better Decisions
The Knowledge Project Podcastās episode with Todd Simkin revolves around the theme of āmaking better decisions.ā Todd comes with a rich experience in trading & making investment decisions for a living. Hereāre some of my favorite excerpts from the episode:
Heuristics are the shortcuts that we take that are mentally freeing. It would be really hard to always work from first principles. Itās so much easier if you can have a heuristic that you can fall back on that just tells you what to do next without having to stop and think through the process.
Todd: There are definitely places where we know that we enjoy the search for answers, but they tend to be separate and self contained. Nobody ever goes out and buys a printed book of Sudoku puzzles that are already printed and completed. But there are other contexts where youāre absolutely right, where people say, āIām afraid that if I donāt know the answer here and I donāt know who to ask for the answer that Iām going to look foolish by trying to figure it out on my own. Iām going to make mistakes as I try to go through this.ā
My father said, āTodd, come into the living room. Sit down. I want to talk to you.ā I sat down in my towel and thought that this was going to be a couple seconds of, āYou canāt quit lacrosse,ā which would have made some sense, sort of a heavy handed edict. But instead he said, āYou know Iāve been thinking about it all night and itās really been bothering me thinking about the fact that youāre quitting. It really bothers me because I havenāt heard why you want to quit other than the fact that youāve been frustrated with your coach. Thereās not enough here. It doesnāt make sense, so youāre going to have to explain to me in a way that it makes sense in order for me to be supportive of this.ā
3. Shreyas Doshi on Following & Breaking rules
Iām taking the liberty to share another episode from āThe Knowledge Project Podcastā. This time it is Shreyas Doshi and Shane Parrish discussing better teams and better products and nuances of decision making. Here is one of my favorite bits from the episode:
So following rules is very comfortable, because if we follow all the rules and it doesnāt work out, we can just point at the rules and say, āLook, we followed all the rules; we followed the process. We came to all the product reviews; we showed you all the mockups and all the intermediate artifacts, as the rules said. And so therefore, now if this product failed in the market or failed to win, donāt blame me. I followed the rules.ā And this is how a lot of operators operate in organizations.
Shane Parrish: I call that the McDonaldās problem because I used to work in tech as well, and people would do this all the time, where itās like āI followed all the rules; I got the wrong outcome.ā And I would say, āWell, if all you do is follow the rules, you should be getting minimum wage because what weāre paying you for is judgment. You need to know when to opt out, when that doesnāt make sense, or where itās leading down the wrong path,ā and that drove people crazy.
4. Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow?
A couple of interesting posts that cover historical context in a highly engaging way. Their key ideas are not even about this history!
Why tunnels could build tomorrow's cities. By Anna-Sofia Lesiv. A good primer on the history of tunneling, technology involved and current progress. Elon Muskās The Boring Company is actually connected to this world. So silly of me to think that āthe boring companyā was just another quirk of his.
āThough the TBM works faster than an army of men with pickaxes, it still doesnāt work very fast. Modern TBMs advance at a rate of 15 meters per day on average, which is an improvement over Brunelās shield tunneling method that advanced at an average of four inches per day, but is still some 14 times slower than a snailās pace.ā
Totally Random by Tom Mcnichol. A quick primer of Random Number Generators starting with simple coins & dice to modern day lava lamps and webcams.Ā
The first RNGs were dice. They date back to ancient Sumeria and Egypt, and were used as the key element in games of chance. As RNGs go, dice are pretty efficient. As long as they aren't loaded, or the environment isn't otherwise altered to favor certain outcomes, throwing dice produces a reliable stream of random numbers.
Birds and Frogs in Physics by Ashutosh Jogalekar. A journey down the rabbit hole of discoveries and experts that shaped our understanding of āphysicsā. If you are wondering what birds and frogs are, hereās a brief definition:
Birds are thinkers who look at the big picture and survey the landscape from a great height. Frogs are thinkers who love playing around in the mud of specific problems, delighting in finding gems and then polishing them so that they become part of the superstructure that birds survey.
5. Power and Perils of Kayfabe
I learnt a new concept ā Kayfabe ā in Deb Liuās āPower and perils of Kayfabe.āĀ
Hereās how she defines the term:Ā
Kayfabe is a term used in professional wrestling to describe the practice of maintaining the illusion that everything is real. This includes the scripted personas, rivalries, and storylines. Kayfabe is the tacit agreement between professional wrestlers and their fans to pretend that the overtly staged wrestling events, stories, and characters are genuine.
This core idea is much more prevalent in all walks of life - in families, companies, and cultures. She has shared a bunch of example, but you can use the references to identify your own āKayfabeā easily.Ā
6. Light reads & videos
Some interesting blogs & videos from not so usual topics of interest.
āDaryl Davis: the secret to get others to like you. By Ankesh Kothari. Ankhesh weaves a beautiful story around how Daryl Davis did it and what we can learn from him.Ā
āSome people collect stamps. Others collect coins. Daryl Davis collects Ku Klux Klan robes.āĀ
Elon Musk's five-step process for improvement. He explains it in just 90 seconds.
10 Emotional support items by Jessica Hagy. As she says, treasure looks different to everyone. Youāve to visit this to experience this one.
7. Everything else
Some random goodness from the internet:
Slices - a puzzle game. Looks simple at the start, but donāt take that for granted.Ā Ā
Are any words the same in all languages? You will be surprised to know the answer!
A brief story of Diwan Singh, one of the most sought-after tanpuriya. An unsung champion who has kept the manual tanpuras creating their magic for decades.
āMusicians will tell you how much patience and aural sensitivity it takes to tune a tanpura ā the pegs have to be tweaked just so, the beads over the bridge have to be set to perfection and the slender threads (jiva) inserted between the strings and the bridge have to be placed just right to yield the resonant buzz of the jawari.ā
And hereās a snapshot of a tweet from Arnav that shares highly valuable operating maxims. The last one āVery demanding, Very supportiveā does not get its due coverage.
That's all for this week, folks!Ā Ā
I hope I've earned the privilege of your time.
Please leave a comment or send a message with your feedback. Itās highly helpful & encouraging. If thatās too much of an effort (or not required), at least hit the ā¤ļø at the start or end of the post to show your love.Ā
Kayfabe reminds me of John Cena's half man, half machine avatar. Loved Simkin and Doshi's takes.