I wish I had Performonks when I was younger

If you are hungry to be better and do better in life and at work, this newsletter provides some food for thought.

The Performonks philosophy - our highest potential awaits

My core belief is that there is only one purpose for all of us - to reach our highest potential.

The specific area doesn’t matter - ‘become a 10X CEO,' ‘to be the best parent’ or ‘to plant as many trees as possible.'

Because of my background and for the purpose of this newsletter, I have anchored the ‘performance’ part on business and marketing. Although the ideas are universal and can be applied to most pursuits.

If you wish to reach your highest potential, read on. The real work begins now.

We can't just wish our highest potential into our lives.

We need a mindset of mastery to convert our inert potential into kinetic reality.

There are two aspects to this - Performance mastery and self-mastery

We need performance mastery: As we get senior, we have to make more Judgement-based decisions. Decisions set in complex and ambiguous situations with incomplete data. Decisions like where to play, how to win, which careerpath to pursue, who to hire, who to fire, who to trust, and who will betray us are tricky because they have no right or wrong answers. Yet, they have life-changing consequences for our self-confidence, businesses and careers.

We need Self-mastery: As we transition from manager to leader, we have to navigate organization politics (it exists, don’t kid yourself), manage relationships (with boss, peers, and reporters), and work on our confidence, communication skills etc. We also have a lot more on our plate—managing our home, strategically charting our career path, and dealing with life’s setbacks. Despite knowing that 1% of life is what happens to us and 99% is how we respond, we often focus too much on external factors and too little on self-management.

Our highest potential awaits, but we get stuck

Atleast in the corporate realm, I have seen that we start hurting after we've spent 10-12 years working. We hit a ceiling.

The Symptoms: Promotions start plateauing. We get feedback in our appraisals (you are not strategic enough, your people skills need work, you don't communicate well, etc.). We even get fired from our jobs. We start feeling there's more to life and why am I even doing this.

We feel stuck: We know we want to work on the feedback, but we don't know how. We want to be out best at work and in life, but don't know how. We want better relationships, but don't understand why we struggle.

Managers can't help: Managers don't have time to mentor us, and frankly, many have not developed the skillset for this.

We lack the life skills for mastery: Training programs are forgotten the next day and B-Schools are at best theoretical.

The worst way to get unstuck is to reinvent the wheel, to start figuring out things for ourselves. This could take years of trial and error. Years we can't spare.

The best way to get unstuck is to learn through the experiences of others. Let me assure you, details differ, but everyone has faced and overcome similar and even worse challenges.

Others' experiences are all around us, in books, blogs, videos, movies and podcasts, as mental models on how the world works, what makes people tick and what brand business blunders are best avoided.

This newsletter curates these across marketing, business, behavioural science, culture, economics, combines them with my own life experiences and constructs original frameworks to help you play life's game with a mindset of mastery.

I publish every Tuesday.

Each newsletter is my way of giving back and takes >50 hours to research and write.

So, my only request is that if you find value, share it with people in your network.

Hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them!

Rashi

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