Business and Decision making

The more we experiment, the more avenues open up to learning new techniques, principles and skills that contribute to our self-growth, and help us make a real breakthrough.

Deliberate experiments can be time and money intensive, can help us with incremental changes or can put us in an entirely new paradigm of self-evolution.

Mainstream knowledge, expertise, skills and techniques have a linear curve towards growth and success. Experimentation breaks the curve and provides us with an exponential success curve, something that is not possible with the path everyone else is taking.

Many great personalities like Thomas Edison, Picasso and Da Vinci were ‘life-experimenters’ who were always trying something new and hence were the reason for disruptive inventions and some of the most loved creations.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Breadth is gaining favor. To make it in today's world, it's essential to be agile and flexible.

It is not to say that deep expertise is useless. It is just that our world is changing so fast that those with more tools in their possession will better navigate the uncertainty.

To be a generalist, zoom out and pay more attention to the context in which you're making decisions.

• Think bigger and wider than you usually would. Read the whole paper, not just the part that pertains to your industry. Study the dynamics affecting your sector. If you are a finance professional, read a book on marketing.
• Take the time to consider how seemingly unrelated developments are connected and may impact each other.

Because generalists have a broader set of tools to draw from, they can dynamically adjust their course.

They may boost our attention span, calm our anxiety and promote pain relief, although evidence is still insufficient. Studies showed that the effects increased the longer people listened.

But whatever mechanism is creating these changes remains unknown.

You can hear these beats best with a pair of good headphones. When each ear picks up a slightly different pitch, the brain tries to compensate and finds a frequency somewhere in the middle. This supposedly causes both hemispheres of the brain to harmonize their brainwaves, a phenomenon called neural entrainment.

Brainwaves are the regular patterns that firing neurons create in our brains, so binaural beats could be bringing these rhythmic patterns into alignment (some research still debates this).

People who wake up early are able to be more proactive and take charge of their life.

Waking up early will leave you with ample time to prepare for your day ahead and take advantage of healthy morning routines.

Our brains need regular breaks to keep functioning at a high capacity.

A glut of research shows that you should take breaks when you can to reap benefits and avoid burnout. The average time to work productively is 52 minutes of work followed by 17 minutes of rest.

• While framing a pitch to your boss, do not simply list out what benefits you will have while working from home and how comfortable and focussed you are working in your pyjamas!
• Instead of making this a personal need, frame it as a problem you and your boss are trying to solve.
• You can mention that your work efficiency is going to be hampered as you have to also take care of your kids, and if the company is able to let you work from home, you can better allocate your time and be more engaged and focussed in your tasks.
• List out the goals that you can accomplish if you are provided with the WFH option. Align your request with the company needs.

• Instead of making it a case of your personal preference and how much you hate commuting, get into the shoes of the employer and frame it from their perspective.
• If you are moving away to a smaller town or the countryside and plan to work from there, the employer may have a different pay scale(based on employees location) and there could be a possible pay cut.
• If you plan to move closer to your family members, taking care of your spouse and kids, it may give your pitch strong reasoning.

We hate being wrong, but mistakes often teach us the most and allow us to innovate.

Think of the pros and cons of trying something and then free yourself to do it. If it doesn't work, take what you learn, and try something else. 

The persona of the fool allows the truth to be told, without the usual ramifications that might come with speaking against social conventions. Give yourself permission to be a fool and see things for what they really are.