Author: Karthik Suresh

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Why What You Know Can Get In The Way Of Getting It Done

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Tuesday, 9.02pm

Sheffield, U.K.

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. – Mark Twain

Megan McArdle, in her book The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is The Key To Success, writes about the spaghetti problem – a challenge where teams are given some spaghetti and asked to build the tallest structure they can.

Things kind of work out as expected.

The engineers get it sort of right and build something that stands up.

Business students and lawyers spend all their time arguing about who is the leader and don’t actually build anything.

The ones who get it right are the kids – who crack on with it and figure it out as they go along.

Crucially – they tend to be the ones that ask for more spaghetti – and there’s nothing in the rules to stop them getting more.

They just didn’t know what everyone else assumed – that what you had was what you got.

There’s something common about many successful business people. You often wonder how they got to be so successful – and it certainly wasn’t their smarts.

Sometimes, you can talk to them and think to yourself “If you only knew how crazy an idea that was you’d never get started.”

But they don’t know. And they go right ahead and make a ton of money.

Mark Twain’s comment is tongue-in-cheek but it’s one of those comments that is also literally true.

Industries get turned upside down when someone comes along and creates a new way of doing things – something that everyone thought was impossible.

After all, people once thought there wouldn’t be a need for more than ten or so computers in the whole world.

So, should we cultivate ignorance then? Is not knowing stuff the answer to being successful?

And that’s not the case either. Those successful people are smart – but just not in the traditional way. They’re smart about people, about what sells, about what excites others. They’re smart about getting smart people to work for them.

It’s a kind of smart that’s called instinct.

When that’s paired with confidence those people go far because they’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done while the rest of us play it safe and do the sensible thing.

And there are two other things.

One is luck.

You can’t discount the effect of luck in how many things turn out.

And the second is who wants it more.

The lawyers and the business students want to lead the group.

The engineers want to figure it out.

The kids want to win.

In any situation the people who want it the most are the ones who are going to make the most of things.

So, for those of us who do not have Mark Twain’s qualities it may be useful to act as if we do – to stop letting what we know and the fears we have get in the way of what we could be.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

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How To Avoid Having To Do Real Work

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Monday, 9.50pm

Sheffield, U.K.

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it’s done. – Scott Adams

Sometimes I feel like much of what I write is too theoretical.

It’s all very well exploring ideas but what are you actually doing?

As Jay Abraham writes, people don’t need strategies. They need solutions.

The world is full of solutions – some of them very complex and many of them solve problems that have been solved before.

Take a simple thing – managing a database.

A database, in its simplest form is like a box of index cards.

Each card is a record and you write stuff on it.

Now, you can get very excited about big, complex databases but in the Unix world a text file can be a database where you use a line for each record.

Interestingly, I strugged to find any applications that would let me create a simple personal database that I could use – for example to maintain a contact database or customer relationship management (CRM) tool.

Odd, I thought.

Back when I was young, my dad let me help him create a database for a medical conference. I can remember showing the visiting doctors their data on the screen and checking if it was right.

This was on an old IBM PC/XT using some version of dBase, I imagine.

Anyway… you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find something that lets you manage a text file as a simple database – that lets you do the basic operations: create, read, update and delete on the files.

Now, of course you can just open the file and edit away, but that’s no fun.

So today’s diversion was to create a small crm. That’s a bit like taking time off from chopping down a tree to work on sharpening the axe.

If you’re being generous, that is.

On the other hand, it’s possibly a complete waste of time, implementing something widely available in a way no one else might ever use.

But here’s the thing.

I’ve found the Internet and the stuff other people have put out there immensely useful in all the work I do.

So, maybe sharing this bit of code, unfinished as it is, may be useful to you as well. Apologies for the formatting – tired of struggling with WordPress!

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

 

#!/bin/bash
# Script to manage a simple crm
# It's going to be as terse as ed

crmfile=$1

# Setup file
if [ ! -f $crmfile ]; then
echo "Name:Company:Phone:Email:Next Action" > $crmfile
fi
while [ "$command" != "q" ]
do
read command
case $command in
q)
exit 0
;;

h)
echo "Commands"
echo "q: exit"
echo "a: add record"
echo "r: show records"
echo "e: edit record"
echo "d: delete record"
;;

a)
echo "Full name:"
read fullname
echo "Company:"
read company
echo "Phone:"
read phone
echo "email:"
read email
echo "Next action:"
read nextaction
echo "Write to file? (y/n)"
read confirm
if [ "$confirm" = y ]; then
echo $fullname":"$company":"$phone":"$email":"$nextaction >> $crmfile
fi
;;

r)
cat $crmfile | column -s":" -t | less -NS
;;

d)
echo "Line to delete?"
read line
sed -i -e $line"d" $crmfile
;;

e)
echo "Line to edit?"
read line
sed -n -e 1,$line"p" $crmfile | column -s":" -t
str=$(sed -n -e $line"p" $crmfile)
IFS=":" read -r -a NAMES <<< "$str"
fullname=${NAMES[0]}
company=${NAMES[1]}
phone=${NAMES[2]}
email=${NAMES[3]}
nextaction=${NAMES[4]}
#echo $fullname $company $phone $email $nextaction
echo "Press enter to keep existing values"
echo "Full name:"
read value
if [ "$value" != "" ]; then
fullname="$value"
fi
echo "Company:"
read value
if [ "$value" != "" ]; then
company=$value
fi
echo "Phone:"
read value
if [ "$value" != "" ]; then
phone=$value
fi
echo "email:"
read value
if [ "$value" != "" ]; then
email=$value
fi
echo "Next action:"
read value
if [ "$value" != "" ]; then
nextaction=$value
fi
echo "Write to file? (y/n)"
read confirm
string=$fullname":"$company":"$phone":"$email":"$nextaction
echo "Current entry"
if [ "$confirm" = y ]; then
ed - $crmfile <<EOF
$line
c
$string
.
w
q
EOF
fi
echo "Record changed. Press r to show"

;;
esac
done
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How To Understand The Economics Of The Information Business

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Sunday, 9.53pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without talking about the other. – Bill Gates

Recently a German supermarket removed all non-German products from its shelves – leaving them almost bare.

It was trying to draw attention to just how many products come from outside the country – the result of a globalised economy – and how sparse life would be if we could only have things that were made by others like us.

If you walk down any high street in the UK you’ll see a lot of stuff for sale and much of it is made in China.

You know it is, because it says so on the label.

It’s the information on the product that tells you what to think – whether you see it as an expensive high end gadget or a cheap throwaway.

If you walk through a factory it’s quite possible that you’ll see the same product going into different packaging and being sold for different prices, with one perhaps three times as much, just because of the information content on the packet.

Bill Gates was really focused on the technology part of Information Technology when he talked about its relationship with business.

But what is information doing to businesses around us and how can you make it work for you?

Information is weird – as Wikipedia explains – it’s easy to create but hard to trust. Easy to spread but hard to control.

You or I can now write what we think and publish it without needing agents, publishers, printing technology or much capital.

Whether people read what we write is a different story.

Why should anyone take anything we write more seriously than anything else that gets in front of them.

The fake news industry, with people engaged full time in creating stories with catchy headlines so they can surf the traffic monetisation wave is probably going to beat the pants off you.

Mainly because they give people what they wish was true.

Let’s say you make something using a 3-D printer – now technology that you can have at home.

If you use a set of plans provided by the manufacturer does the thing you make have value?

Could you go down to the market and sell it to someone passing by?

Probably, but not for much, as if you were able to do that others would use the same plans to try and get some of that profit you’re raking in.

So is the value in the thing you’ve made or the ideas and designs you used to make it in the first place?

The thing with ideas is that they don’t really have intrinsic value – not in the way a gold mine does.

Ideas are precious and valuable but it’s not obvious how they are economically precious and valuable.

That’s because once you’ve had an idea it costs nothing to make copies of that idea.

If you give your idea to one person, nothing stops you from giving it to someone else, or for the first person to pass it on in turn.

In fact, once the idea is out in the open, it’s quite hard to keep it secret.

Finally, you could tell someone that you have a great idea but unless you tell them the idea they have no way of telling whether you’re right or wrong.

Ideas then are great to have. When they’re expressed as books and art and music they make society better.

Imagine just how joyless your life would be if you didn’t have music and colour and books.

So, things like copyright law were created, not to protect businesses, but to give authors and artists a way to make money from their ideas.

And that’s a confusing things for businesses and people who have, for a few millenia, made their money from controlling property.

Now property is only worth what you get from the information about it.

A house in a good school area is worth more than one that is not – and you know the good schools and bad schools because of the information available to you.

You start to see the way people are dealing with this as the new titans of the information business emerge.

Tim Ferriss, for example, has written about he stopped worrying about his books being stolen and pirated and focused instead on giving his readers the best experience he could.

It just makes sense because while some people will steal your stuff it costs you nothing. It’s not like they’ve stolen your TV or car. Instead of letting that worry you focus on the tens, thousands or millions of consumers who do business with you.

The challenge for us is being able to figure out a way to work in this new economy where what you do is worth something between zero and a lot.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

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How Far Do You Have To Take It Before It Becomes Worthwhile

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Saturday, 8.57pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration – Thomas Edison

I can never walk past a second-hand bookstore without going in.

A library is the same. I feel like I’ve missed out if I have to leave without having run my fingers over a row of books.

But these days when I stop on books, especially ones about management, marketing and business I find it hard to justify picking them up.

Most books are written with a structure and formula, not entirely visible, yet still there.

For example, there is usually an anecdote, a story of someone that did something and how as a result something happened.

Then there are the lists – the lists of questions to ask yourself, the lists that are designed to be psychological measurement tools that tell you where you lie on a spectrum and the lists of characteristics and features that you should look for.

Now the writing business is a business so if you want to make any money your books need to be what people expect – a certain size, a certain type – because we don’t like things we don’t know.

The point of picking up the book is to learn something you didn’t already know. To discover thoughts that might help you with the kinds of things you want to do.

Let’s take an example – in Brian Tracy’s books you’ll often find exercises to do.

One of them is a sentence completion task. He asks you to complete sentences like:

  • I am …
  • People are …
  • Life is …
  • My biggest goal in life is …

If you were working through the book fairly quickly you might write a word or phrase right there and then.

But, then you would have missed the opportunity in the exercise.

What you should do is come up with as many completions as you can.

You might think about all the ways you could end “I am…”

Are you a

  • Writer?
  • Marketer?
  • Programmer?
  • Manager?
  • Entrepreneur?
  • Father?
  • Husband?
  • Daughter?

… and so on.

The value comes when you keep going and then when you are exhausted going some more.

Why is that?

Because the answers that come easily – the first few – are what you think you are.

They are the words and phrases that you and others have used for many years to describe such things.

They may not be who you really are right now – just because you haven’t thought about this for a while.

And I think that when something isn’t born out of exhaustion you can tell.

You can tell when an author has written a book to market.

When they have written something that hasn’t drained them – taken them to the edge of what they know – and caused them to question the foundations of their thinking.

It’s safe writing – and that’s not where you are going to get value.

It’s easy to come up with a list of things to do. But often, what is needed is not the list but the time spent in staring at the first question on the list and coming up with every response you can.

That’s sometimes called divergent thinking – expanding your thinking.

Then, you might look at that mess and pick out the ones that resonate with you.

Or go for a walk. Or to bed.

And then the next day you might come up with something entirely new – not on the list at all but something that is right and new and something you can share.

It’s insight born from exhaustion – you’ve reached the finish crawling on your hands and knees and that’s what it took to discover that new thought.

As I was reading quotes by George Polya one about the sayings of a maths professor jumped out: “In order to solve this differential equation you look at it till a solution occurs to you.”

That’s the thing about insight – it doesn’t come from a line on a page or a talk from someone.

It emerges when those lines and words mix with your time and effort and create something new that is right for you.

So that’s the thing about these books I see now – I look at the lists and wonder whether I have the energy to do what is needed to really use them well.

Because when you realise that you will need to keep going for a long time to make it worthwhile you also have to get much choosier about what to do in the first place.

Choosier about which race you’re going to enter – because you’re so determined to finish – come what may.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

How Can You Become Better At What You Do?

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Friday, 8.59pm

Sheffield, U.K.

A tool, to paraphrase George Polya, is a trick I use twice – Sanjoy Mahajan

Mahajan, in his book Street-Fighting Mathematics, writes how the best teachers say little and ask much because questions, discussions and wonder help you learn so much better.

Learning maths, however, seems relatively straightforward.

As the most purely intellectual subject there is Maths doesn’t have to deal with emotion and mess and life.

Or does it?

You could argue instead that the application of maths is fundamental to modern life and everything we do can be done better with maths.

William Shakespeare mused about the gap between thought and action – and how it was filled with uncertainty and doubt.

He was talking about Brutus’ decision to murder his friend Caesar but I’m thinking about it more in the context of using software more effectively.

For example, many years ago when I was reading about marketing I came across Neil Patel who, on his blog at Quicksprout, created long, in-depth content to help you learn how to market better online.

And he made it simple and step by step. If you followed his instructions, opened a spreadsheet, entered in lots of keywords, came up with topic ideas, created a content schedule and worked every day you could also possibly end up like him.

Which sounded great, but didn’t work for me.

Partly because I really don’t like working hard, especially at something that really should be done by a computer.

The principle was right – we need to create content because that’s how the world will find us and, perhaps more importantly, how we will find ourselves, but his method didn’t work for me.

The tool wasn’t right.

Now, the tool that I use that does work for me is perhaps ridiculously specialised.

I use a text file filled with thoughts and ideas and use a markup syntax to identify important ones and the ones that should go into the diary.

A program then extracts what’s important and creates a content calendar for me.

I get involved in the messy thinking and let the computer create the structure and framework and order.

So, this is one of the challenges of going from thought to action.

We can have our eyes opened to principles but it’s only by trying stuff out ourselves that we can really learn and figure out whether we’re happier with a hammer or a chainsaw or just getting someone else in to do the work for us.

Now really, where I wanted to go with this post was to talk about where we get these principles from in the first place.

And one good source is shareholder letters.

Most people are familiar with Warren Buffett and his letters, which are hosted on a site that is so unconcerned with fancy design that it remains a precious corner of the Internet.

Charlie Munger’s letters are worth reading as well and Jason Zweig suggests a few more worth reading and these from Sardar Biglari are worth a look as well.

Reading these letters gives you a look into how people who have made a career making decisions make decisions – how they look at and examine situations.

And, often, how they use maths to explain what has happened and what they want to make happen.

So, to really make the most of a situation it seems to me we need to use better principles and questions, to really figure out which tools are right for us to get better at what we do.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

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What You Need To Do To Be Understood

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Thursday 9.00pm

Sheffield, U.K.

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh lord please don’t let me be misunderstood. – Regina Spektor

If you could look out of two windows, one dirty and one clean, which would you choose?

Communicating is hard. Even the word “communicating” is long and multi-syllabic and doesn’t really catch the essence of what we’re trying to do.

We’re trying to pour our thoughts into someone else’s mind and we spill quite a lot as we try.

Chris Anderson, the curator at TED talks, says one of the reasons they work so well is that human beings have evolved to listen to storytellers.

That person who tells you stories as you huddle around a fire, your grandmother who tells you stories as you snuggle up together, that’s what you grew up with and what your genes have learned is the way to learn.

But just as important is the fact that the storyteller and you are near each other. She can look at you and tell by how you react whether you are hearing her or not.

Writing, on the other hand, is a relatively new invention. And even if you use audio or video it’s not the same as getting feedback from wide open eyes staring at you.

So, it’s not surprising that most of what we see and read is not easy to understand.

In fact, it’s easy to misunderstand.

And it’s even easier to ignore.

Then again, it’s naive to think that you’ll get it clear the first time you try and express yourself.

Clarity is iterative. It emerges over time, like polishing a diamond.

You start with a lump and end with a sparkling gemstone.

So, how can you get better at being clear?

The first thing is to remember that using big words doesn’t mean you are having big thoughts.

Winston Churchill said shorts words are best and the old ones, when short, are best of all.

You can say a lot with small words and you will almost certainly be better understood.

Being clear is important when you want to explain what you’re thinking to someone else.

But it’s just as important that you’re clear with yourself.

It’s easy to fool yourself about what’s important, what you should focus on and what you should do next.

But the more effort you put into making it clear to yourself about what matters to you and what is the best use of your time, the more likely it is that you’ll be happy at the end of each day.

So, what should you do if you want to be understood?

Try and be clear in everything you say, write and do.

William Zinsser, the author of On Writing Well said that the secret was to get rid of clutter.

Strip every sentence of every word that has no use, that is long when it could be short or passive instead of active.

And that skill comes with practice so the time to start being clear about everything is now.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

What Should You Absolutely Do Before Approaching A Prospect?

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Wednesday, 10.08pm

Sheffield, U.K.

To make a great film you need three things – the script, the script and the script. – Alfred Hitchcock

The media is everything these days, isn’t it?

Everyone’s a rock star on YouTube, minting it with podcasts and making loads of money just talking into a microphone or to a camera.

Or are they?

Harvard Business School has a page called Working Knowledge aimed at Business Leaders where you will find a short article about John H. Patterson and the National Cash Register company.

Cash registers changed modern retail and the N.C.R led that change and its salespeople were guided by a little booklet called the N.C.R primer.

This document grew as the 1800s waned, reaching 200 pages and then shrinking to a quarter of that again and it created the foundation for a selling approach based on scripts.

The point of the script was to make it easier for salespeople to carry a conversation from an approach to a close.

A hundred or so years later the script is the hidden structure behind much of what we see.

Every radio program, every TV show, every professionally produced piece of entertainment has a script behind it.

And if you’re trying to work out how to talk to someone about what you have to offer a script is something that will probably help you too.

Jay Abraman, a well known direct response marketer, has some interesting views about the kind of attitude you need to have.

First, you need to value what you have to offer.

That’s sort of the starting point – you have something of value and you need to know that, and believe in that before you try and approach anyone.

Then, when you do approach someone, you need to assume that they will respond to you. Eventually, you will talk to everyone you need to talk to.

When that happens what will you do?

Will you simply “wing it”?

When that conversation starts and the prospect approaches you are you just going to say the first thing that comes to mind?

Well, at first probably yes.

But then you’ll learn.

And what I’ve learned is that having some points that you plan to talk around helps.

If you’re going to have talking points, you could do worse, than writing out a script.

We remember speeches from great leaders but we rarely remember that those leaders rarely wrote their own speeches. The words that came out were drafted by others and they helped change futures.

If you’ve watched The Wolf of Wall Street you’ll remember Jordan Belfort and his scripts.

In his book, he’s quite blunt about it:

“…young men and women who possess the collective social graces of a herd of sex-crazed water buffalo and have an intelligence quotient in the range of Forrest Gump on three hits of acid, can be taught to sound like Wall Street wizards, as long as you write every last word down for them and then keep drilling it into their heads again and again—every day, twice a day—for a year straight.”

And if they can do it, we all can.

Movie makers and actors get it.

A good script is essential if you want to make a good movie.

Perhaps that insight is the same for sales.

Or for life.

Cheers.

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

How To Get Out Of Your Own Way This Year

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Tuesday, 9.00pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table. – Natalie Goldberg

Happy New Year.

The great thing about the first day of a new year is that you have a chance to change things at the same time that millions of others are planning to as well.

Clearly, not everyone is going to succeed, but that isn’t the point.

The point is that you ought to at least try.

We were watching a film the other day where a character quoted Dr Seuss, “You have a brain in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”

And one of the things that is either enjoyable or panic-inducing is choosing your tools.

I can spend far too much time obsessing about whether I should be doing things electronically or on paper. Whether it’s best to use a software program or code something myself. Whether a reporter’s notebook is better than a Filofax.

That’s just the way I’m wired and, quite probably, many others as well.

That’s why so many rules and resolutions and goals don’t work.

They may have worked for someone else, worked really well, but that doesn’t mean they’ll work for you.

What you need to do is figure out what will work for you and that may be getting organised or getting stuck into the first thing you see.

Trying to get it perfect often means not getting started at all.

Which brings us back to tools.

What is going to work for you this year?

One approach that works for me is to think of having lots of small tools rather than a singe big one.

Sort of like having a toolbox filled with hammers and screwdrivers instead of carrying around a single Swiss Army knife.

If you think of this like writing a computer program – you’re creating a program to follow this year.

The chances are very slim that you know exactly what program to write if you haven’t already got one in place.

So it makes sense to start with what’s important right now rather than what might be important in five years.

The more lines of code you write the more likely it is that the program will fail to run or have bugs when you do run it.

Small programs are best. And small programs that work together are even better.

So, for example, if I decided that I was going to run every day for the next year I’d probably fail in a week or less.

But, if I tried to get my 10,000 steps every day there’s a good chance I could do that and get in the odd run.

How could you combine that with better diet, more rest and better time with your family?

What could you do to make your job more interesting and work on stuff that felt like it was helping someone?

When it comes down to it we live our lives following programs – often ones that have been written for us and downloaded into our brains by parents and society.

The first step, then, to getting control of your life is to start writing your own program.

And today is a good day to get started with that.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

How Are You Going To See Yourself In The Year Ahead?

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Sunday, 9.07pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Diversity: the art of thinking independently together. – Macolm Forbes

The last few days of the year are a good time to reflect and plan.

There’s a natural rhythm to it, just a natural time when you look back and forward and think.

And one of the things that we’re all probably more aware of has to do with diversity.

There are the struggles we have with outward diversity – the diversity that deals with gender and race and choice – but there is also the struggle for inner diversity – of knowing who you really are.

We’ve all reached wherever we are in life because of choices we made in the past.

But, what lay behind those choices? Did you make them because they felt right for you or because they felt like the right choices to make?

I’ve made many decisions because it seemed like the right thing to do – the thing that would help me fit in or do well or get ahead.

The danger with that is by trying to fit in you forget who you are.

And, at some point, it may make sense to try and rediscover yourself – and the end of one year and the start of another is not a bad time to do that.

The point I’m trying to make, I think, is that if you try and be the best at something anyone else can do you’re in for a rather stressful existence.

That’s because you’re always worried that someone else will come along, someone younger, harder working and with fewer commitments, someone cheaper – someone who can replace you.

And that’s no different for businesses. Anyone in a commodity business knows that they only way to survive is to be as efficient as possible – to sell at the lowest margin that allows you to survive.

Anything more than that requires something special – something that no one else has – a moat.

And that moat, whether you are an individual or a business has to come from something unique that only you can do.

The fact is that you have to deal with the world around you – and the world is full of different people.

But – if you try and change to fit in with those people you’ll forget who you are.

The point is about being able to communicate with others, not be like others.

Which brings us back to diversity, in thought and belief and action.

What’s unique about you is the way you think and act – and you show that by having a belief in yourself.

I think in the year ahead one of my goals is to look more widely – search out diverse thoughts and ideas – because it’s by understanding differences that we’re more likely to better understand ourselves.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

The Secret To Doing Work That Matters To You And Others

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Sunday, 9.04pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Social media is not about the exploitation of technology but service to community. – Simon Mainwaring

As the year draws to a close there are a few things I have learned that you may find interesting.

In 2008, I wrote on a piece of paper, if it isn’t written down, then it doesn’t exist.

A few years ago, that thought became if it isn’t on the internet, then it doesn’t exist.

Clearly, whatever it is that I was referring to does exist…

The point is that if others aren’t aware then does it matter whether it does or not?

It’s a bit like the old Zen question of if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?

It’s all very well reading other people’s material and thinking hard about things but do you really need to start doing things yourself?

Well… the only way to find out was to start trying to do something and that’s where this blog started a few years ago.

And at first, it was awkward and halting. I didn’t quite know what I was writing about or who I was writing for and what would happen as a result.

But what I learned was that didn’t matter, for a few reasons.

First, the act of doing something had a benefit in itself.

Deciding to write at around the same time each day and just seeing where things went was the only way I would find out where I wanted to go.

To find treasure, you have to start to dig.

I started thinking I’d write about energy, a field in which I had some experience.

But I found that I hardly wrote about that. Instead, I wrote about things that interested me, things that I heard or read or came across and wanted to understand in a little more detail.

And really, its through writing that I started to discover what I was really interested in.

Second, you might start by trying to attract people or write for an audience but you soon realise that’s just tiring.

If you write about what you are interested in then at least there’s one person who’s getting some value from what you’re doing.

You’re happy.

The fact is that spreading it more widely has nothing to do with you.

At all.

Derek Silvers has a wonderful TED talk on how to start a movement that shows a lone dancer on a field.

At that point, he’s just a nut dancing around.

What changes is when he gets his first follower. That first person who joins in is the one makes everything change.

That bit of social proof is what gets more people to join in and eventually have everyone join in.

It’s Christmas, after all, so we watched Elf, with Will Ferrell.

And the same thing happens there when Zooey Deschanel starts carolling near the end. At first she’s a lone voice and it’s only when someone else joins in and then someone else that it registers on Santa’s Christmas spirit meters.

So that’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve learned in the last couple of years of writing.

If you want to create something – words, pictures, music, software, a business – you’ll need to do it for yourself first.

Check that you are happy when you do it regardless of anything that happens later.

And then, whether it goes anywhere else depends on the community out there and what they do.

You can’t control that but you can be thankful if they like what you do.

So, for those of you that take the time to read and like these posts thank you very much and I hope you have a great Christmas and Happy New Year.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh