Mental Models I find helpful
How and when can it succeed?
It is easy to reject new ideas. The natural instinct is to find holes in any new idea and criticise it. Best VCs and investors force themselves to see the opposite.
Trick is to ask ourselves, "how and when can it succeed?”
I often see my dad and brother do that subconsciously.
Avoiding groupthink and decision paralysis
Problem with groups is that everyone is unsure. Everyone likes to have other's opinions before expressing their own. This stumbles decision making. No-one is able to reach a decision because everyone is waiting for other's opinions.
The solution is to put our thoughts out. It will help everyone else. It might appear rude. It might draw opposite views. But it will push things forward.
Stoicism: This won't last forever. It won't even last for a long time.
It might just be the last time you are meeting your friend. It might be the last dessert of your life. It might be the last time you are playing football.
So many things that we take for granted are not going to last forever. Forget forever, they are not going to be there for long time either.
Try to appreciate the relationships and what we have from this point of view. Give your full self to the people you meet and the things you do. Savour the present.
What is risk?
“You can't win if you don't play. You can't play if you don't have anything left.”
Taking risk means having a gambler's mindset. Taking multiple bets knowing you will lose some and win some.
- We must take bets. Don't wait to be 100% sure - you never will be.
- Things will fail. But we must take bets because only then can we win.
- You will lose some bets. You will win some. So keep playing. Just avoid too heavy bets which can take away everything.
Thinking long term
Long term thinking is about maintaining leadership over long term. To maintain leadership:
- You must be profitable
- Reinvest those profits in innovation
Reinvesting profits means sacrificing current gains. It means investing in projects which might fail. Don't be afraid to take such risks.
Jobs to be done theory
This one is form the book "Demand Side Sales". One line that hit me was:
People don't buy our things. They hire us to make progress in their life.
Instead of focusing on "features", the marketing content (and the product) should focus on the current struggles of the customer.
What we measure, improves
The metric we start measuring, starts improving.
It is important to have some quantitative metric of the things that we value. And then religeously measure it every week.
Our renewal rate was 40% when we started measuring it. It improved to 55% once we started measuring it every week.
I use Notion to record our key-performance-indicators (KPIs) every week.
Avoiding Envy: Someone will be always getting richer faster than us. It is not a tragedy
Someone will be always developing a better product. Someone will be always getting more recognition. Someone will be always getting richer faster. It is not a tragedy.