Abhijit's Sketchnotes No 7
... because we remember pictures - not text
Welcome to Week No 7 of my Monday Mailer. This is a weekly compilation of visuals made from interesting ideas. Curating what you missed. Get this in your mailbox <add your email here>
This week’s mailer talks about death and life. Brooks Brothers - the 202-year-old maker of business suits, and one of the last with U.S. factories, went bankrupt. Most organizations in S&P 500, barely get past their teens. But humans are living longer. That has many implications. The professional poker players were among the first to notice the spread of corona virus. How did they do it? Besides life lessons from Poker players, we explore how to get insights and stay curious. This newsletter has the drawing of an elephant. Can you guess the reason why? And our lead story is about thinking of your mind as an Operating System. So let’s go…
1. Think of your mindset as an operating system. The way we behave, comes from the mindset we have. People who have a scarcity mindset believe that there will never be enough, resulting in feelings of fear, stress, and anxiety. If you believe that that there is more than enough for everyone, you have a mindset of abundance. Leaders need to change their attitudes and beliefs — their mindsets — about what leadership looks and feels like, if they want to produce behavior change that lasts over time.
Cognizant and MIT produced this leadership playbook for the digital age <read it>
Humans want to live longer. Our birthday songs have that wish built in. “Happy long life to you…” <you just sang it in your head, admit it!> Thanks to better nutrition, sanitation, vaccines, advancements in medical science etc, every generation lives longer than the previous. The life expectancy in India in 1951 was 32 years. It has more than doubled now. US has 97,000 people above 100. Japan, Uruguay, Hong Kong and Puerto Rico have many centenarians. Likely that robots will become caregivers for the elderly. Which industries will thrive because of this?
Leave your response in the comments below
3. Back in Feb-March 2020, the professional poker community was among the first to realise the accelerating impact of Covid19 and started raising the alarm for shutdowns. Pro-Poker players tell you that they think in terms of probability. And learning to think under pressure. We could all do with the greater understanding of uncertainty, and how to think about it under pressure, that comes with the game of poker. I am going to read Maria Konnikova’s latest book The Biggest Bluff . She wrote an interesting book called The Confidence Game which I loved. Read about that
Hat tip: Ravi Kiran’s newsletter
4. Can you train yourself to become more insightful? Where do insights come from? Challenging assumptions often leads you to explore ideas and find new insights. Look for patterns and coincidences. Psychologist Gary Klein calls these “lightbulb moments”. Being stuck in traffic jams (pre-Covid) led me to listen to podcasts. It was at a traffic light that a cop noticed that the driver in the next car (an expensive BMW) was tapping his cigarette inside the car. ‘That is odd’ he thought. That insight led to something <click here>
Hat tip to Satyajit Mohanty, CHRO of Crompton and a subscriber, for sending me the link to Gary Klein’s webinar video.
If you have a link you wish to share, email it to me at
abhijitbhaduri@live.com
On Monday 13 July 2020, ie this evening, at 6:00pm IST you can tune in to a chat with Megha Tata, MD South Asia, Discovery and I. Nikhil Dey, Vice Chairman WeberShandwick will moderate. It promises to be a fun chat about anything & everything. Truth be told - that is why I practiced painting this wild elephant below. If you like it, please let me know, by leaving a comment.If you don’t like the idea of having an elephant’s sketch here, please forward this mailer to your friends who love wildlife.
And yes, you can ask questions to Megha and me in the webinar. Sign up to listen and ask me (easy) questions. Click this: bit.ly/zerohouronline7
If you like the newsletter, do consider adding your email to the box below and who knows you may start looking forward to Mondays and specifically 9:00am every Monday. That’s when this newsletter reaches you.
Stay connected. Stay curious.
@AbhijitBhaduri
Wow. This is so fascinating . Yes , that's the word. Thanks for putting such a variety together Abhijit.
And yes, this elephant I like .
The 4 mindsets, just started reading the article , have bookmarked it for later, it's very interesting, I also think all 4 are important mindsets and if one can have the ability to switch from one to the other or atleast any 3 of them , we are talking about a person who will be pretty effective overall ...
The newsletter was, undoubtedly, 'insightful.'
Just a bit more curious about your piece on insights - I was wondering whether each of the four areas mentioned in the 'Lightbulb Moments' talk will be complimentary gifts if every human on the planet gets some knowledge about social psychology and emotional intelligence. Both of these areas can teach us why people do what they do. Once we start looking around with someone else's perspective, we'll start thinking the way they do, and hence, will come up with new insights. This will, in turn, make people empathize more and learn collectively. Do you think so?