MONTHLY MULLING💡
The Secret to Learning Anything, the Japanese Ringi System for decision-making, and Fooled by Randomness
Hi👋,
Tapan here.
Monthly Mulling is a newsletter sending the best ideas from the web to your inbox for free. High signal. Low noise.
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Happy Sunday y’all!
I want to start today’s newsletter with a quote from Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist that seems to be relevant today.
“It is my proposition that the human race has become a collective problem-solving machine and it solves problems by changing its ways.”
Onwards.
💭MULLING
🤫The Secret to Learning Anything (Article - 5 mins)
Albert Einstein in a letter to his 11-year-old son wrote the secret to learn anything. He wrote,
I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and carpentry are in my opinion for your age the best pursuits, better even than school. Because those are things which fit a young person such as you very well. Mainly play the things on the piano which please you, even if the teacher does not assign those. That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes. I am sometimes so wrapped up in my work that I forget about the noon meal. . . .
This piece of advice has been iterated so many times, in so many ways. Follow your passion and your work will become fun or do what you love.
But how do you start?
One thing I have learned is that you change your mindset to learn.
I always thought I didn’t have any important skills. But I have started this newsletter and sending it out every week to over 100 readers.
It requires some skills - writing, reading, technology, and being creative.
But the first step was to stop saying - I can’t do it!
If I never had started, I would have never known that I had these skills.
Your brain is like a muscle. The more you use it, the more it develops. So if you stop learning new things (or putting on more weight), it won’t grow!
So start learning new things. Your intelligence is not fixed - it grows!
Enjoy the process because that’s what matters. If you’re doing something just for the end result, you will feel miserable.
You cannot start a blog to make money. A podcast to be famous. A YouTube channel to gain followers.
You do those things because you enjoy doing them. When you enjoy the learning process, you can learn anything.
🍧 The Ice Cream Principle - Dave Perell (Tweet)
Do you agree with this?
Nothing ruins creativity like too many voices weighing in. Groups of people don’t agree on what’s cool or interesting. They agree on what’s easy.
😎 The Theory of Change (Article - 6 mins)
There are two ways to approach a problem.
😐Theory of Action - You look at things you know how to do and try to solve the problem using those things.
😁Theory of Change - You start at the end. You look at the solution you want and things that you will need to get to that solution
Both approaches are quite different. Let’s try to understand it with an example.
You want to create awareness on social issues.
With the theory of action, you look at the problem (create awareness) and what you know - maybe you have a corporate job. So you email your colleagues and create that awareness.
With the theory of change, you start at the solution (masses are aware of the social issues) and things you will need to get to the solution i.e. how do you inform the masses? You not only will send out that corporate email but also, maybe create a blog, podcast, connect with people who have similar ideas, maybe a YouTube channel.
Do you see the difference?
🏯The Japanese Ringi System
I read about the Ringi system in a book I recently read, the Culture Map by Erin Meyer (Amazon link) which talks about work cultures across the map and how can you understand people from a different culture to work better together.
The Ringi system is the ultimate way to make a timely democratic decision in an organization.
Suppose you have a meeting on Friday in which you need to decide if your company needs to order more coffee.
In a typical US firm, the problem will be brought to the table on Friday during the meeting and people will be asked to make a decision.
In the ringi system, a ringi (a paper or digital document) will be created on Monday which will talk about the problem and provide potential solutions. The ringi will then be forwarded throughout the office to appropriate people who would be asked to add their responses to the ringi and sign-off.
So come Friday meeting, the ringi will have already been sent to the participants who would have given a thought to the issue and provided some feedback.
It makes taking a decision during the meeting really easy!
📚TREAT YO’ SHELVES!
I finally made some time to read. I was losing the habit and have started waking up early just to put 30 minutes every morning to get through my daily reading goal.
🃏Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb (Amazon Link)
If I had to summarise the book in one line - life is really random, don’t mistake luck and randomness for skill.
Nassim Taleb is one of my favorite authors. I have read Black Swan, Anti-Fragile, and Fooled by Randomness at this point. I will be reading Skin in the Game soon.
Here are my favorite lessons from the book -
🤯Past events will always look less random than they actually are (it’s called Hindsight Bias).
🦢The past blowups were always surprises, as will be the future ones. Just because it hasn’t happened before, doesn’t mean it won’t happen ever (look at all the Black Swan events).
🎭One cannot judge the performance in any field solely by studying the outcome, it’s very important to understand the cost of alternatives. The quality of decisions should not be judged by the outcome.
📈Human systems are non-ergodic - very long sample paths wouldn’t end up resembling each other. So a lucky idiot in short term will become a less lucky idiot in the long run.
📰Be aware of the difference between noise and information. News is noise. History is information. If something is important enough, it will find its way to your ears.
💸Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements by Mary Buffett and David Clark (Amazon Link)
I picked this book just because I wanted to learn how to read the Income Statement and Balance Sheet to make investment decisions. Yes, I call myself an auditor.
The book simplifies each line item in the financial statements and what you should be looking at to make your investment decision.
A good read for beginner investors.
🆕CONTENT UPDATE
🎙PODCAST
🥳WHAT THE HAT!?
WTH!? is a weekly podcast discussing the journey of graduates from mostly engineering colleges. Releases every Saturday.
We also started WHAT THE HAT!? Insights - a newsletter (every Sunday) providing you an update on the episode releases, behind the scenes, various segments, and other things in a readable format!📰
🧘♂️ S2E2- Prajit Nair on the UPSC exams, life as an IAS Officer, and appreciating simpler things in life - Prajit Nair is an engineer turned IAS officer talking about his posting in a rural village in Maharashtra. It was a great conversation.
🤸♂️ S2E3 - Jayam Vora on co-founding Fitternity, helping 11.5 million app-users to get fit in India, and advice for entrepreneurs - We talked with Jayam Vora who is the co-founder of Fitternity (India’s largest fitness service marketplace) with over 11.5 million users, 8.5 million dollars in investment, and a network of over 12,000 gyms!
LISTEN NOW👇
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💰COLD BREW MONEY
Our weekly podcast discussing money because your friends and family won’t.
🧠 #17 - More Mental Models - We continue our conversation around mental models providing some more mental models for investors.
🏏 #18 - Valuing your IPL Team - For all the cricket fans out there, have you ever wondered how much is your favorite IPL team worth? We discuss that.
LISTEN NOW👇
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Note: If you like our podcast, share it with your friends on Twitter, Instagram, or anywhere else! Don’t forget to tag us! (Twitter | Instagram)
That was it, folks! Bye for now.
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