#200 - Seven most powerful ideas from 2024

What I learned the deepest this year

👋Dear Reader, welcome to the 200th edition of this newsletter ever and the 67th this year! With this, we turn over another century and nearly another year. Thank you for supporting this publication!🙏

1️⃣How you feel about yourself shouldn’t come in the way of what you want to do.

Self-consciousness eats away precious attention, leaving you with less, sometimes much less, to do well the task at hand. That’s just what happens in a snapshot. Over time, self-consciousness burdens you with unwanted beliefs. If you fail in pursuit of an ambitious goal, it may insist that you are not good enough and that this pursuit is beyond you. You respond to that. You pull in your goal, first a touch and then by much.

Many of us see our vision as flexible and reality as unchangeable instead of seeing our reality as changeable and vision as enduring. Small wonder then that in times of difficulty, we lower our vision and leave reality as is.

Every time we adjust our goal to what seems realistic, what seems realistic changes because we start believing that we cannot accomplish what we had set out to. This is a particular problem for those of us who identify strongly with what we do. On this, I wrote:

When you cannot separate what you like to do—writing or selling products or marketing products—from how you see yourself—as writers or salesperson or marketer, you cannot evaluate your work without simultaneously going through an existential crisis.

This is a deep idea based on the concept of creative and emotional tension floated by Peter Senge who in turn used it from Robert Fritz as an adaptation of the fundamentals of structural thinking.

2️⃣A cynic is a retired idealist.

There’s no one way people are supposed to be. Doctors are not supposed to be any more noble than cops or the clergy. Get this and you will accept that some doctors do malpractice, some social workers swindle public funds, and sometimes friends won't return your calls.

Those who mistake their ideals for their expectations are in for disappointment of the chronic variety. Those who see reality for what it is, without continuously comparing it with what it should be, see that people have both potential and limitations. Judge people for who they actually are — or reality for what it is — not as per this arbitrary model in your mind.

Now imagine if you just did your thing without being attached to any high ideals.

3️⃣I want to is (much) more powerful than I have to.

Choice > obligation. Choice matters. There’s a big difference between the quality of life that happens to you and life that you make happen. The main difference, I believe, is in how we handle the consequences. I wrote:

When we feel we must do things and these must-do things go bad, be it managing weight or a long-term health condition, it is hard to take responsibility for the consequences. Because we don’t believe we have made a choice. The choice, if at all, has been thrust on us, and so have the consequences. Neither are ours.

This is an idea I’m still processing. Because there are also things you start off with that don’t resonate with you — taking up a job you don’t like for your family or leaving your country of birth for a better life — that you may then find meaning in over time. This is where the next idea comes in.

4️⃣The art changes the artist.

Beware of what you choose for that will decide who you become. This is how you become the disillusioned middle-aged model you scoffed at in your youth. And this is how you become the best at what you do. There’s a thin line, for instance, between being resourceful and shirking. Cut corners once too many and you will find little rigor in your methods. Take care of the small things and that’s how you’ll do the big things. The work shapes the worker. What you do makes you just as much as you make it.

5️⃣Treat others not as you would want them to treat you but as they would like to be treated.

From middle school, I remember this story about King Porus who ruled over the Punjab region and Alexander the Great from the 300s BC. When asked by Alexander the Great how he wished to be treated after losing the war, King Porus famously replied, “Treat me as a king would treat another king.”

The impressionable me took this lesson to heart. I learned to project onto the world what I wanted. I would gift people things I would enjoy having, and so on.

In the literature on positive psychology and strengths-based personal development, there’s this assessment called CliftonStrengths. It maps you to a bunch of talent themes, one of which is called Individualization. Those who have this talent tend to follow a horses-for-courses policy for others. If you ask them what motivates people, they may say “It depends.” Not in a wishy-washy way but in a it-depends-who-you-are-trying-to-motivate way.

Say such a person had to find a gift for a friend. How would they choose? They would probably pick a category first—books, experiences, articles of use, et cetera. Then they would pick a topic within the category—which book, what kind of experience, et cetera. At every fork in the road, they would individualize the gift.

What do you gift a friend? Depends on the friend.

6️⃣The point of language is to help make distinctions, not blur them.

The Christmas carnival at my daughter’s school — a decidedly fun event for not just students but for parents and families — was canceled this year. In the communiqué, the school went for this:

We’re excited to announce that this year’s carnival will take on a unique format! Original planned as a Whole-School Carnival on December 14th, the event will now be a Learners-Only Carnival on December 13th during school hours.

The day will be thoughtfully organised, with learners enjoying the carnival and their regular school activities at different times. This ensures every child can participate in the celebration while maintaining a smooth day’s flow.

We appreciate your understanding and continued support as we create a joyful and memorable experience for our learners.

Ah, the spin. Unfortunately, for the school, it landed badly. I thought I could handle such spin thanks to product promotions and other marketing spiels, but no. Adjectives such as thoughtful, pre-loved, vintage do not shine light; they cover in shadow. Every time I read or hear something that’s trying to woo me, I ask myself: does this clear waters or muddy them?

7️⃣The right form cannot exist independently. It always depends on the context.

“The form is the solution to the problem; the context defines the problem,” said design theorist and architect Christopher Alexander. Understand the context to find the right form.

When you sit with your financial planner and he starts putting standard numbers in the spreadsheet that he thinks should correspond to your spending, those numbers may feel random to a level. Because he may not understand that you love ordering in or that your wife loves shopping online and that what is discretionary to him is essential to you.

Here’s an essay I wrote on this, in the context of designing careers.

---

👋Hi! I’m Satyajit and thank you for reading my work. I’m a decision-making trainer and a career coach and I like writing about both of those things. This July, I started a second newsletter where I do creative nonfiction—essays and character sketches.