Food for thought 🍄
Are you in the righteous comfort zone?
There are two kinds of comfort zones. The first one is where you recede from the unknown. The second, is where you thrive in the unknown. Graduating from the first one to second will probably be your single greatest jump on the ladder of success.
Life tips from a parenting genius 👨👩👧👦
I recently finished reading a book by Alfie Kohn called “Unconditional Parenting”. He makes a thought provoking argument that kids may respond to incentives, love-withdrawals, and punishment not so favourably in the long term. More shockingly, conditional parenting reduces one’s self-worth over time.
Conditional parenting can be saying “Good job” after every small thing your child does. Conversely, scolding them after they do not behave as per your expectations. It can also be giving incentives such as toys, for good behaviour, or taking away things for bad behaviour. It can also refer to love-withdrawal such as, timeouts, or ignoring until they say sorry or mend their behaviour.
Author goes on to suggest more constructive alternatives. For instance, be reflective. Consider your parenting style, is there a less controlling alternative? If the child refuses to obey, ask why that is the case rather than scolding. You will be surprised as to how children respond to reason and love. Please consider their age, they simply don’t understand certain things. Focus a lot on your relationship and stop being rigid about things being a certain way. This way, children will have space to grow in a more self-confident way!
I found this book very insightful as many lessons are equally applicable to adult relationships. We cannot be controlling, we need to be reflective, authentic, and we need to talk less and listen more. Use love and reason. Not conditional reward or retrenchment.
Fresh Content summaries of the fortnight 📖
Key messages from MKBHD’s interview of Mark Zuckerberg
When Mark was asked about how does he split time among WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Oculus. His answer was, “if I try to tune into everything, everyday, there would be too much context switching. I try to have a theme every week. I do 2-3 things in a week, focus on nailing that”. He also suggests that he has good people running the apps, therefore he can focus on most intellectually challenging and impactful problems.
Key takeaway is focusing on impactful problems few at a time. This is a skill that Mark and presumably many successful CEO’s thrive on!
In addition to this, Mark spoke about AR/VR:
- VR/AR convinces your system that you are in a different place. This is very powerful. Long line of tech needs to develop to give you indistinguishable sense of presence. Facebook is spending more money on this than anyone else in the world.
- 5-10 years from now, relatively sleek glasses with huge computing power will bring this kind of presence. Projecting holograms into your world. You would be able to interact with holographic objects in the real world.
- AR/VR will also enable new kind of senses like Sonar – you will know when you are getting close to an object! this will enable kind of experiences that we can only dream about
- We wouldn’t need ANY screens. Tablet, Smart TVs, monitors will all turn into holograms in fully virtual or augmented environments.
- Mark believes this is going to be the next major computing platform even if it is a few years away from now.
Click here to see the full interview
Do not partake in the public shaming pandemic 😡
Public shaming is ancient. It used to take place in a public squares hundreds of years ago. In 19th century, it moved to newspapers, and in the twentieth century, people are scorned online. Internet and algorithms have made it possible to generate instant mass outrage.
This has exasperated during a pandemic. People with contagious diseases have often been targets of shaming. Author cites Mary Mallon from New York 1907 to recent examples of super spreaders around the world. The shaming has not been limited to super spreaders. We have publicly shamed people who hoard toilet paper. We have also casually described many as “Covidiots”.
Everyday on social media, we experience multiple waves of outrage. What is common though is that, the faster the outrage mushrooms, the faster it fades away in the collective memory of the digital consciousness.
My key takeaway was that this is in many ways, is the “new normal”. On one hand, we need to be more tolerant of it, and on another we need to avoid participating in this public shaming pandemic.
Click here to read the full article
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Abhi
Abhinandanshah.com 