Month: November 2023

Dear reader: How big is your anti-library?

 

An anti-library is a collection of books that are owned but have not yet been read. The term was coined by seminal writer and thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

 

 

Unlike the plague of ‘stuffocation‘ that has us owning far more shoes, clothes, watches or food than we need, and a lot of times unused, this is a happy problem to have. Having a pile of unread books in your book shelf or library. Without getting into the spiel of ‘curse of knowledge‘, it is a not so subtle realisation that the more you know, the more you realise how little you know. Sledgehammer blow and much needed when we try to defy gravity and get too floaty for our own wings!

 

 

You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an anti-library. The concept it describes has been compared to the Japanese tsundoku.

 

Illustration by Ella Frances Sanders from Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World.

It is said that nothing is more important than an unread library. These might include what are politely called ‘classics‘- classics are those books which people praise but don’t read.

 

 

“It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning,” Lincoln Steffens wrote in his beautiful 1925 essay. Piercingly true as this may be, we’ve known at least since Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave that “most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone who points it out.”.

 

 

But how do we face our inadequacy with grace and negotiate wisely this eternal tension between the known, the unknown, the knowable, and the unknowable? That is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb explores in a section of his modern classic The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable  — an illuminating inquiry into the unknowable and unpredictable outlier-events that precipitate profound change, and our tendency to manufacture facile post-factum explanations for them based on our limited knowledge.

 

 

There are some other compelling works that will beautifully complement The Black Swan and they include astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser on how to live with mystery in a culture obsessed with certitude, philosopher Hannah Arendt on how unanswerable questions give shape to the human experience, and novelist Marilynne Robinson on the beauty of the unknown.

 

Welcome and embrace the unread so that we don’t dread the unknown!

 

ENDS

NOT In Awe of….Optimising!

 

Contemporary life and ‘ modern management ‘ have been fixated on the optimise everything on the horizon for quite some time now. The jury is still out on what the compelling reasons are for such kind of a shiny object chase, but then, that’s the reality.

 

 

Good enough is never good enough and only the best would do. It’s like the millennial sporting the T Shirt captioned boldly in front saying “BROWN” and in very small font below it mentions ” Though my heart is in Yale “.

 

 

In the quest for maximising, ironically what ends up happening is you trade off on happiness, which was the original intent when you wanted to optimise. The dark side of wanting to optimise everything.

 

 

Human beings are not search engines. SEO Strategy conventionally would have had us going for keywords that the search has the best potential to throw up high in the pecking order. But, that strategy is passe. You are not going to win that search. You are not even going to figure in page 30 of the search results. It seems as if most of us have lost the key to the keywords in the battle of the search. 

 

 

Probably an ideal situation to pivot to doing something remarkable. How do we own our word? Do things that make people search for us by our name, our work, our projects. Showing up with the right work, at the right time, in the right places. Do the hard yards, the slow deliberate work hard of earning permission, building a tiny circle, the smallest viable audience. Over time, the tribe embraces you, the word (your word) becomes the shortcut to get more of what you offer.

 

 

How about substituting SEO(Search Engine Optimisation) with another acronym? FEO- Find Engine Optimisation. Because it’s more reliable to seek to be found by people who were looking for you all along.

 

 

The chasm will get bridged at its own pace. That’s fine. Let’s take our word | commitment | generosity for it!

 

 

A couple of years ago, a trio of Stanford University professors-philosopher Rob Reich, computer scientist Mehran Sahami, and political scientist Jeremy Weinstein released a new book titled “System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot.” 

 

 

The book argues that it’s the programmers themselves — and their focus on optimization — who inevitably combine with society’s larger “aspiration to maximize profit and scale” (and the accompanying tech monopolies) that ultimately are creating a slew of unintended problems.

 

 

It is true to say that efficiency has run amok. Where shaping our future begins by directing our attention to “the distinctive mindset” (and growing power) of technologists —and specifically, the mindset of optimisation. The book has a quote from Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel “Brave New World”: “In an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost.”

 

 

As a valuable contributor seeking to build a career, a business, or a body of work that matters, you benefit when you develop a unique asset, because that asset gives you the leverage to choose a niche in a system that respects optimization instead.

 

 

There are so many things that you can optimise- recalibrating your work out and diet to lose more weight, your presentations so that you can close more sales, optimise your website for better and more website traffic, your ads for better impact, your sleeping patterns to get more rest in less time, Cosmo(and so do a lot of other magazines) even says you can optimise your sex life…

 

 

Sooner or later you realise that you are spending your best energy and time on optimisation NOT creation!

 

 

This perennial cycle of optimisation is the impediment for new exploration and discovering, going into the unknown which is where your best solace and happiness resides.

 

 

So where do we go from here? The rabbit hole of optimisation? Or creating things better? Give me the latter any day!

 

ENDS

Resume…With An Anti-Resume!

 

Contrarian /noun/. : A person who takes up a contrary position, especially a position opposed to the majority view, regardless of how unpopular it may be.

 

 

We’re genetically programmed to follow the herd. Thousands of years ago, conformity to our tribe was essential to our survival. If you didn’t conform, you’d be ostracized, rejected, or worse, left for dead.

 

 

Continued success in the modern world requires continued innovation. The ability to disrupt established methods and find new ways of looking at old ideas is one of the most sought-after qualifications in all fields. It’s a super power that allows you to be right when others are wrong.

 

 

The Anti-Resume is an idea floated by seminal writer and thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book The Black Swan. Here’s how Nicholas puts it ” “People don’t walk around with anti-resumes telling you what they have not studied or experienced…but it would be nice if they did.”

 

 

This borrowed thought from Hareb’s book was one of the things that I shared with a batch of over 150 students recently when I had an opportunity to pick up a conversation with them. Being in final year, and all set to embark on a career path of their choosing(though not always), the purposeful provocation was to be a contrarian to stand out and get noticed.

 

It’s such an interesting idea as Kent Blumberg puts it: imagine the hiring manager reviewing resumes and then going ” we have reviewed your resumes and see how your education, skills, achievements and experience could be relevant to the role that is on offer. That is the reason we are keen to meet you. Now, we would like to now know from you your approach to life and work. So, before we meet, could you submit a one page anti-resume from you that will articulate the relevant education and skills that you are yet to have, the relevant experiences that you are yet to gain and the accomplishments that you are yet to achieve. 

 

Now let’s look at the prognosis of such an experiment. The scenarios could turn out in multi faceted manner viz:-

 

– candidates who might not be able to fill up a one pager show either of the two- a lack of self awareness or they feel they are over-qualified

– the perception of interpreting their future roles kicks in. For eg, some candidates might talk about their lack of sales experience as the role demands it. While some may ignore mentioning that bit

– you get to discern the wheat from the chaff- candidates who believe their development is in their own hands while some others see it as an entitlement and a gift to be had from others- you get to see who plays victim and who plays victor

– you get to see the candidates who are intrinsically motivated to bridge the delta in education, skills or experience and others who are not

 

And why wait until you are looking for a job. Wouldn’t it be interesting to ask yourself every few months, “What haven’t I learned yet? What haven’t I experienced yet? What haven’t I accomplished yet? And what am I going to do about it today?”

 

 

Quoting from a feedback letter by Steve Roesler:

At the risk of getting a bit “jargon-y”, this goes to the point of Conscious Incompetence.

On the great learning curve of life, we revel in reaching a place of Unconscious Competence in things that we do. Auto-pilot, if you will.

Yet to excel, we need to pull back and take conscious look at what we do, how we do it, and the results that we’re getting.

I like it. Now I’m thinking “Anti-Auto Pilot.”

 

 

So, shall we resume..sorry anti-resume?

 

ENDS

What Do You Own? Sailing The Ownership Ocean!

 

More and more of us irrespective of demographic are veering towards usership or experience as against the conventional grain of ownership. A shift governed by wanting to avoid the baggage that tags alongwith ownership. As most of us chart our paths and accompanying struggles in this vast ” Republic of Not Enough ” !

 

That said, this rant is about actually taking the initiative and the effort to actually own something. Rather than be the freelancer in the bottomless, infinite Red Ocean territory called freelancing, or the 9 to 5 job hater going through the motions inspite of hating what she does, day in and day out.

 

That ownership might be the idea that is yours and you are doing your best to bring it to fruition into the world. The ownership could your goodwill or reputation that you have painstakingly acquired over the years by painstakingly and generously showing up and shipping out your best craft or work, consistently. The ownership could be the precious permission that your MVA(Minimum Viable Audience) has gracefully offered you to share your thoughts with them without coming across as spam or intrusion. The ownership can be also be the Intellectual Property Rights that you have established for your next game changing idea. You cultivate leverage that way.

The shift in thinking can be to move beyond the 8 hour shift that you put in, without owning anything (other than the 8 hours of your time)- that is hardly an inventory that will get the best suitors or bidders to make a special trip and reach out to you. The assured way to be a casualty is to be a commodity aka ‘ another ‘.

 

Being yet another is a trap and a race to the bottom and you hardly get any leverage or negotiating power. And therefore, at most times, you don’t get paid what you are worth.

 

So, if you are the retailer of your life, ensure that you own your inventory and that is desirable. The onus of ownership is on us and thereby the potential outcomes.

 

ENDS

Don’t Doubt The Benefit You Get!

 

It’s a beautiful place to begin with. Where you are being generously offered the ‘ benefit of the doubt ‘. The signal being sent out is that you deserve the chance or the opportunity and you will use your best bonafide intent to maximise the opportunity. It embarks on a place of belief and trust and there is no better arsenal at your disposal than these two if the idea is to make things better.

 

 

There are times when we feel that we deserve the benefit of the doubt but do not end up getting it. Sometimes it comes your away, when you least expect it. Its great when you earn it.

 

 

The rant here is to understand if we are working overtime when you are graciously offered the benefit of the doubt. Because it is cyclical. You can pay it forward. And then that goes to establish a ferris wheel of a culture echoing what goes around comes around. It is as Kevin Spacey said, “If you’re lucky enough to do well, it’s your responsibility to send the elevator back down “.

It is about choosing to believe the best about people. No better example than love which walks the walk on this. No filling in the blanks with negative assumptions and conveniently calibrated bias or prejudice. We will stand in good stead if we un-install the app called ‘ self doubt ‘ from our mind. Like charity begins at home, giving the benefit of the doubt can start with oneself.

 

 

There is a genuis and power within all of us. Don’t short change it by using the currency of doubt. You don’t have to assume the worst about everyone, either. The world isn’t always out to get you. And offering the benefit of doubt hardly costs us anything. Doubt and enquiry are proven pillars of progress.

 

“Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.” Khalil Gibran

 

ENDS