To continue on the previous point on black and white, consider this announcement:
http://open.bufferapp.com/introducing-open-salaries-at-buffer-including-our-transparent-formula-and-all-individual-salaries/

Buffer has decided to be completely transparent about their salaries. This is pretty extreme. We do not know what the repercussions will be or whether it will pay off in the long run.

But what is inspiring is that they took a stand and took it all the way! It shows their commitment to transparency, and it will attract more people who value transparency and further strengthen their culture.

The world is almost always grey, is it not? Events are relative, opinions are relative, and Einstein says even the most basic “facts” are relative. So, is there any use of having strong absolute opinions?

I think the purpose is to trick our brain. Absolutes lead to conviction. And conviction, I feel has led to greatness. A lot of people who dramatically changed the world were completely convinced of their ideals and approach and this gave them the push to change the world. If they had doubts, they suppressed them. Or convinced themselves that the doubts were unwarranted.

Seems like “studies” show that open offices don’t really work.

From my experience playing around with our open office structure, they promote spontaneous interaction and help generate ideas which can be quite important in a small company.

However, precautions need to be taken to maintain balance and avoid disruptions, especially to people in the maker’s schedule.

Strategies that worked for us:

1. Passing the cost of disruption to the disruptor. Post-it notes passed on with a “Need 5 mins for X” do this nicely. The “disruptee” can then attend to X when convenient.
2. Split offices, one for each kind of schedule (we are beta testing this). Interaction needs to happen in other ways though. You don’t want to completely separate your team.

A beautiful description of the scientific method:

He doesn’t say, “if it agrees with experiment, it is right!”. He says, “If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong!”

We make this mistake many times - finding some pattern in the world that matches our hypothesis and then accepting it as “proven”. To gain true understanding, we ought to look for patterns that go against our hypothesis.

I want to become better at evaluating and consolidating the information I consume. And big goals require effective processes to support them 

Hence I have started a series of blog posts. The rules are:

1. Post length is limited to 120 words (to make me think and consolidate),
2. Every post expresses 1 idea / view point.
3. 3 times a week to create a habit.

Let’s see how this goes!

Around minute 34, he mentions the popular “S” Curve of technology life cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_life_cycle#The_four_phases_of_the_technology_life-cycle).

What I thought was an interesting angle was how that affects estimates. By default, we extrapolate trends linearly. And that has an effect on our predictions when the rate of change is changing. We underestimate new technology and over estimate mature technology. Something to be mindful of!

I saw this very nice interview between Elon Musk (Tesla) and Sal Khan (Khan Academy)

The first thing that struck me about Elon Musk is his conviction.

He wanted to be at the forefront of humanity’s technological progress, so he identified areas where the biggest progress would take place. This part is not hard.

And then he just went all out. That conviction, in my opinion made all the difference. Fear of failure usually holds us back - but I feel that, given the force of his conviction, even if things hadn’t worked out so well, he wouldn’t have fallen too far.

I changed my new design to the first of blogger’s (new?) templates. Definitely feels simpler and easier on the head. I am trying to be more aesthetically conscious these days you see..

I also dropped my “pseudo” (I used to be a pseudo geek, now I am a geek. Yay!).  Because Yoda told me to.

I like the ostrich though, so that stays. It’s kinda goofy and reminds me not to take myself too seriously.

Since the internet exploded, much of our combined knowledge is available to the average person with internet access. But it is not just about availability though. Information is fed to us [emails, facebook, blogs, news articles] at an unprecedented rate with most of it random, subjective and noisy.

The sheer volume of incoming information means that we hardly have the time to make our own evaluations. So we outsource it. Consolidating information and making it consumable is becoming a big business these days and the loudest (not the best) information gets most attention. Is this healthy?

I read this article recently - http://jamesclear.com/goals-systems

In my view, processes and goals have a much closer relationship. Effective processes

1. Convert big fuzzy goals (become better at writing / write a book) into smaller, easily digestive chunks (write 2 articles / week). The smaller goal needs to keep refilling itself to provide enough momentum to read the goal.
2. Form habits by tapping into the unconscious mind. After a few weeks of writing articles, it will start coming naturally to you without having to think too much.

Goals provide fuel for processes, processes are the vehicles to achieve goals.