Friday Reflections # 2

It is fortnightly Friday and time to reflect on the past 14 days. A lot happens in a few days if you pay attention to the details. Here goes R2 of my public reflection notes.

On Life Vision

It has been just a few days since i declared my third innings to myself. It was a big bold decision to dedicate rest of my life to stay as a learning machine. Doing what you love, following your heart, staying with your passion is actually hard and hence very few do it. The opportunity cost is very high. There will always be something left on the table which is bigger than what you picked up. It is bloody scary actually. Courage is doing it anyways.

On Learning

Every time I want to talk about learning, this one image I have in front of me. The highest way to retain and cherish what you learnt is by actually teaching it to others and learning along with them. So let me make that my career choice(educator) doing what i love to do (learn).

I felt better making the decision. This one decision took care of 100s of other decisions for me. Everyday is guided by this clarity. This is a priceless feeling ?? As a strategist, I preach purpose and having leadership to execute the same. That applies to life as well and not just products and services.

On Purpose to Action

Once the purpose was clear, I carved out appropriate projects to get things moving. The first project i did post declaring third innings is to launch my site karthis.com. As a designer my OCD levels are very high. To publish an ongoing live document as a site needed enormous courage inside me. I did it anyways. This was the best decision I ever took in life.

On Live Notes

I always felt we create dead sites. How many sites are updated on a daily basis? How many sites have the courage to tear down everything and show you what is the new thinking? Not many isn't it!

We pay a lot of attention before launch and post launch nothing happens to the site. I hated that idea of keeping something dead for a long time. Hence i am not a big fan of even company websites (I don't have one even for Xperian). It should be a living breathing organism just like all of us. If a site cannot mimic our thinking, what is the point? On those lines, it was a bold move to keep a notion document as my site forever. All my learnings will be documented there everyday and if anyone needs it anytime, don't even ask me, just take it :) If you want to do the same thing i did, here you go with steps ??

I always believed all teachers must be students first. I decided to make it a living reality for me and my students. I keep pushing them to carve out projects and learn something as we don't learn when there is no purpose. Looks like actions speak louder than words so i decided to do a few projects myself and share them openly. My projects range from mini, micro, macro and mega sizes. Mini is something you do it in a day. Micro is one week max. Macro is 4-6 weeks max and Mega is >20 weeks. Here is a sneak peak view of the current projects I am handling. The projects range from health all the way to work.

On Branding

In class we were discussing the first principles of personal branding and visibility as a part of career support programs in our Maker Diploma 2020 and i realised what branding do I have to talk about this? I felt like a hypocrite. So decided to build on the personal brand using first principles in all social media platforms.

On popular demand, I am launching fundamentals of social media as a course in a couple of weeks. But for now, I am testing the ground with my own branding in Dribbble, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Contrary to popular belief it is not that hard to manage all your social accounts and it doesn't take that much time when your purpose and formulae are clear. The organic growth story is mind-blowing to me. The color and the direction of arrows matter and nothing else does at the moment. So it is working! Can it be even better and even bigger absolutely. But here is a start...

On Launching & Landing

I push my students and my executives to keep launching value, testing business ideas and expanding the market. They give me a blank stare when i ask them to roll out. So this time, I worked with my team and we launched two products in 2 weeks. Checkout no-code jumpstart program here and beautiful inspiration here. All these ideas have been kept in our internal vaults and in our walls. We never had the guts to believe that it may help others out there. Now that I am a learning machine by choice, I decided to push it out anyways. We will learn from everything.

On Money

Money was a touchy-feely topic and we never talked about it. Passion is considered as the highest currency in Xperian and we don't give the needed importance to the real currency. We decided to carve out a project for the same and said we will go behind our first million starting July 1, 2020 (assuming 1X=100INR, whatever that is).

I am assuming we should close this in 3 years as an internet business (working in your pyjamas) but i am not taking any pressure. If 3 becomes 5 so be it ?????♀?

The formula for financial independence is 400x and x being your monthly spend. When we calculated as a team, 10 Cr should take care of it. If we can't even make that much with all the product design and business design gyan, we are humbugs. If passion cannot earn money, all passionate people will always remain poor. That is a sin. So we decided to build in public and keep going closer to the goal every single day. We will share a dashboard with you on how we are striving to go closer.

That was a lot for 2 weeks isn't it? I felt better by cleaning up a lot of things, crafting meaningful projects, crafting systems and routines for the new innings, planning details for the decade and more. It has been a productive fortnight i must say ??