A friend shared this quote with me and I thought it was quite profound!

Fact is, most of the world wont be able to see you if you stand on top of the tallest mountain in the world. Maybe noone will be able to see you. But if you look carefully, you can definitely see more of the world than you have ever seen before.

It was something that stuck to my head from the early days of jfdi. And i ve felt a need to remind myself of this every once in a while as It’s something easily forgotten in the rush to build a product and release it.

A company is a group of 3 or more people. The job scope of an entrepreneur is to build a framework or a blueprint which guides this company of people to run a business. And if the framework is built right, the company becomes scalable.

I have just started reading the Innovator’s Solution - and this was one of my big learnings from the first 3 chapters.

Taking the example of a cafe serving chocolate milkshake - the authors illustrate how focusing on the situation (When job does the chocolate milkshake product do for people and how can it do this job better?) rather than the customer (Who buys chocolate milkshake and what kind of milkshake do they like?) can make a big difference in how you target the product.

You must have heard of infinite scroll (http://pinterest.com/ , Google is a good example. See how there is no pagination). I always thought pagination was stupid when you could do something as cool as in infinite scroll.

Looks like Etsy did an A/B testing on infinite scroll.. So how it works is they roll out infinite scroll to a section of the users and stick to the old pagination for the rest of the users. And then they collect all kinds of relevant data like clicks, purchases etc of each user group and compare statistics to see if there is any significant difference in usage pattern.

Firstly, Spoiler Alert. If you havent watched the movie / read the book, please do. It is worth it!

Secondly, thank you Rohan for pushing me into penning this down.

So I have been thinking about realism ever since I saw that movie.. It was one of those moments when all the chatter in your head gets silenced for a bit and you feel  liberated afterwards.. similar to when I watched Forrest Gump. I think it is pretty close to the feeling of “elevation” that  Jonathan Haidt mentions in the Happiness Hypothesis.

And put a lot of effort into finding out where you can add value.

Gives you a negotiating edge and lets you tailor your pitch accordingly. 

Seems quite obvious eh? As I learnt recently, it tends to slip our mind when we get too caught up in trying to get our idea across.. which we tend to do when we are really passionate about something.

So when you are really passionate about something and want another person to join you, make sure you actively slot in some “listening time”. (Not so obvious now perhaps? :) )

A good friend has taken to asking people on their birthdays as to the 3 things they would like to do over the course of the next year. I thought it was a good idea, and would be good to put it on record.

So 3 things -

1. Work more intensely 

 Not in terms of time spent, but with high productivity. Once of the hardest things to do as a self employed person is to have a cut-off. It is so easy to keep working all day and then work becomes life. I need clearly defined baskets within which I work with full intensity on 1 thing.. I am starting to experiment with a bunch of ideas toward this goal, will keep a note of it here. 

I always wondered why I was seeing so many lactose intolerant people.. it seemed natural to me that humans should be able to drink milk. The thought of it being a mutation definitely crossed my mind. 

Looks like I was asking the wrong question! http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/evolution_of_lactose_tolerance_why_do_humans_keep_drinking_milk.single.html

Here I am again after a nearly 4 month hiatus.

I generally come back to write if I have something to say.. there are usually many things, but 1 consolidated BIG idea stands out that compels me to share it. The idea has consolidated in my head over time and I know more or less what it is that I want to say. So its just a matter of writing it down, and it is not so hard. Once it is done, I go back to the world of fuzzy ideas and unclear thoughts. Occasionally I think of writing something but I need to consolidate first and the extra step creates enough inertia that I dont write anything till my next BIG idea moment. 

So, I had another of my bi-monthly urge to write a blog post (and I suspect I ll write a few more before I hibernate again)

Why? I woke up at 630 and I felt happy. Satisfied. At peace.

I had written before about being a producer in the morning, and I did follow up on it. I have been tracking my wake-up timings almost every day since November ‘11, and I have been steadily pushing them towards the 630 mark. It was very nice to see so many 6s and so little 8s.. I was exercising regularly in the morning, so I felt healthy. I occasionally took an afternoon nap,  but usually I got some momentum going before lunch and I was quite productive in early June.