[CTQ Smartcast LIVE] Will you need a Personal Information Management Assistant in the future?

 
 

(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)

Personal Information Management Assistants (PIMAs) could soon become a must-have for professionals. In this CTQ Smartcast LIVE session, CTQ co-founder Harish and special guest, Sajith Pai, Director, Blume Ventures discuss the possibilities, problems, and potential.

You’ll learn

  • What are PIMAs? What do they do?

  • How do analogies of cooking and fitness industry relate to PIMAs?

  • What is PIMA-able (and what is not)?

  • The most critical challenge in note-taking (and the solution for that)

  • Whether hiring PIMAs will compromise serendipity

  • The biggest issue about reading that Sajith has had to come to terms with

Get answers to these notable questions from the audience

[Sowmya] Would non-CEOs need PIMAs?

[Ramanand] What would be a typical brief given to a PIMA? What should you look for while hiring a PIMA?

[Sirisha] How should one go about looking for a PIMA?

[Joel] How did the course ‘Building a Second Brain’ influence Sajith’s approach to personal knowledge management and would doing something like that be good for someone who wishes to be a better PIMA?

Try answering 3 fun Quiz Qs on PIM

Sajith got them all right! Will you? Watch the Smartcast to take a shot at these quiz questions and learn related trivia.

Before you go, check out these links to some of the interesting stuff mentioned in the session:

For more ideas that can help you uplevel and stay future fit, join us on Telegram.

READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE

[Start of Transcript] 

[00:00:00]

Harish Kumar: Welcome. I think most of the joinees here are old participants of the Future Fitness Gym. But Sajith, just for you, the Future Fitness Gym is a place, which I think, in a lot of references to your post as well, is basically a place where all of us get together and do some regular actions like in a gym for physical fitness, this is for future relevance. So that's what we've been doing for the last few months where people read, people watch videos, people do some exercises, and every month we have a live call like this, where we invite a special guest and we pick their brains on topics like work from home set up, or improv, how do you use improv in learning? And today's is about Personal Information Management and it really piqued our interest when we read this first, because it resonated with a lot of the things that we do. So we thought, we'll have you here. So thanks a lot Sajith for joining us…

Sajith Pai: Pleasure to be here. Happy to connect.

Harish Kumar: …As a special guest.

Sajith Pai: Great to be here, intrigued by what you guys are doing. I'm delighted to be here. And I would love to go through this with you guys.

Harish Kumar: Thanks, Sajith. The way we do this is: there are three sections, the 'See' section, where we learn something new. 'Tea' is where we have a stimulating interview and where we'll be picking your brains. And the last section will be some questions and wisecracks. So the 'See' section is generally where we summarize [00:02:00] whatever we've read. But before that, we wanted to do a quick poll just to get a sense of what the audience thinks about some of these questions around Personal Information Management. So I've launched the poll, in case you are able to see it, you can start submitting your answers.

These are the questions: Why are you interested in Personal Information Management? And the second question is, what methods do you use to save interesting or important information you come across online? Both these questions are questions that I personally have. At least the second one is one that I've personally struggled with, tried to find my own hacks. So we thought we'll get a sense of what you guys have also been doing. For the first question, the top answer seems to be, 'because I like staying organized'.

Sajith Pai: Okay, interesting.

Harish Kumar: And what methods, 'email the content or URL to self'. That's an interesting one. ‘Save it to a bookmarking site or app’. Yeah. ‘Copy-paste the URL into a Word doc or Excel sheet’, again, seems to be a top one. ‘Save as a bookmark/favourite.’ Great. Very similar in terms of what are the things that we have come across. Not many surprises till now. We shared the article that we'll be discussing with everyone who's participating today. [00:04:00] Great article on Personal Information Management Assistants. Is it fair to say, Sajith, is it fair to call them ‘PIMAs’ already?

Sajith Pai: Yeah you could. Just makes it more convenient.

Harish Kumar: A very interesting article. And like I said, it resonated with us at multiple levels. (A) Because we've been running these CTQ compounds where some people have actually been using these compounds as a source of curation. So, that resonated quite well. And there are two big takeaways for us from the article.

One was, you talked about how it is not that common yet having an information assistant. But you equated it with cooking that we do. It’s a great metaphor that I thought summed it up quite nicely, because at least pre-COVID-19, most of the cooking duties had been outsourced and people would pick it up only for doing something special, right? It was on certain occasions, or when you want to do something that really appeals to you. But it's not something that you will not do. It is part of your daily diet, like your food diet, this is what you're talking about here, is information diet. So you need it, absolutely. You're not saying that you are going to take that out. So it has to be done. But at least the part which is mandatory, sort of like compliance kind of a thing, that's being taken care of by someone, and you do the ones which you are really interested in. So that was a very interesting parallel that we saw.

And the second big one was how you have actually tried to [00:06:00] make these two levels for PIMAs. And I think this is where your VC background is coming in, where you're actually thinking of a business model around it, and what are the different ways in which this can be sold, and whether it's shared or part-time, full-time summarizers.

Again, though, it's not mentioned here, I like the parallel that you drew with these fitness trainers. There’s one trainer who's going to just come and tell you that this is what you need to do. Whereas, the other one is, it's also about summarizing, not just curation. And the status symbols one was also something which, again, as it goes with all these things, you really never know what is the job to be done for some of these things. Maybe a status symbol is the one people are looking for. So, these two parallels or metaphors really struck us. And we thought it was a great way of putting this together. And these are the two big highlights for us. So at this point, any other thoughts from any of the other participants before I go to Sajith and ask him more questions.

Any other comments that any of you had, after reading this article? You can raise your hand and we can take those comments. Yes, yes, Sowmya.

Sowmya: Hi, Sajith.

Sajith Pai: Hi, Sowmya.

Sowmya: Hi Sajith. Yeah. Before I realized the article was over. That's what struck me. It's a really brief one, so wow. You put quite a lot into it. Now, I was just thinking whether fundamentally anything is going to be different for, at least the way I saw the article, it was more for [00:08:00] the CEOs, people who are somehow at the top of the pile. But I was wondering if it's really going to be that different for people like me, who are generally doing their own thing and not interested in any piles, really.

Sajith Pai: Fair. Okay, so I do think it's specifically for people who are time-poor, and typically drowning in a lot of stuff to be read. Specifically, also, I think, for me, I think it came also because specifically podcasts are becoming a challenge. And because with podcasts, the issue is... I mean, there's a related article I wrote. I'd share it with you, it's there on my website. And to do with the fact that podcasts have a very unusual ratio of creation time to consumption time. They have one of the lowest ratios of creation time to consumption. What I mean is, as opposed to writing an article, which like this had taken me an hour to write, maybe, I don't know, our hour and a half. Maybe it was in me, I wrote it very quickly. But, but typically, an article would take as much as 8-10 hours to write because, a good article of 1500 words, and it can be consumed in 11-12 minutes. So the ratio is like 1:32. And whereas for a podcast, it's typically 1:4, it takes 4 hours to create and put it out there and it takes one hour to listen to that one-hour podcast.

So, I think the challenge came from podcasts specifically, because there's a lot of high quality information now in podcasts. And we're beginning to seem bizarre... like The Seen and the Unseen is like three, four hours, five hours even. It's insane. I don't know. Maybe there are people who listen to it, but I'd love to listen. In fact, I paid nearly 1000 rupees to get someone to transcribe one particular episode of The Seen and the Unseen so [00:10:00] that I could read it. I just didn't have the time to sit in for three hours. So I think you're right. In the sense that it's like cooking, right? Cooking was something that only the really rich could afford once. And to have a cook was like a statement. But slowly over time, it's got democratized and all of us can afford it. So I think some variants of this, we'll start seeing, is my sense, and specifically, podcast transcriptions, stuff could become one area. But yeah, I mean, Blinkist is like really the look. It's like the fast food of PIMA. It's like the McDonald's hamburger, you know, whatever it is, a veggie burger. Equivalent. So, yeah, these are my thoughts.

I mean, I don't think it's only for the super-rich, but I think that's typically where it'll start. And there'll be more democratic solutions, etc. And I think the highest friction is there. And it's that, after I put that thing out and it got tweeted, about 3-4 people reached out to me saying, 'I would love to transcribe it for you and I'd love to...' And I was a little taken aback like, 'Oh, okay.' And you know, maybe an internship. It could be a great way to have interns. Yeah. So someone could say, I want to work with you guys. And I don't know... And I can say that... I believe Kunal Shah, of Cred, again, don't tweet about this, etc. But I heard, or someone mentioned it in my Tl, that he has an assistant who does this for him. So, great. I remember that all of these billionaires, for example, will have an EA, an Executive Assistant MBA, and typically they curate interesting articles and stuff like that. So yeah, you're right. It will start from the super-rich, or rich, and it will become more democratic. That's what I think. [00:12:00]

Sowmya: Thank you.

Sajith Pai: Yeah, sure.

Harish Kumar: Ramanand, you want to go next? Your comment?

Ramanand: Yeah. Maybe we'll get to this later in the questions as well. But what do you think is the typical brief that, let's say, a CEO or someone maybe heading a VC firm would give to these assistants?

Sajith Pai: Yeah, I think every month, typically, one relevant book comes out, one or two relevant books come out. Take Trillion Dollar Coach, No Rules Rules, etc. These are not books which give you a… I mean, okay, one odd book may give you extreme joy learning insight. There are books like, for example, there's a very interesting book, which is fairly expensive, called Founding Sales, it's for SaaS businesses, etc. It's extremely useful, but it's work. It is sincere work. And I would say there are 10-12 key principles, etc. So, there’s a hierarchy of these which are generic business books, which have appealed to trillion dollar coaches of the world, What You Do Is Who You Are, etc. which dare say can be read in 4, 5, 6 hours. Two is, books which are very specific to your work, which give you a lot more insight.

I think the first set of books is a real challenge. They don't give you an extreme amount of joy. Maybe the odd book will give you a lot of joy. Okay, but they don't give you a lot of joy. And there I think the thing is, the brief that would give is, can someone just read this and tell me what it is about. And so I think broadly, this is a wonderful book I read by [00:14:00] this French philosopher, Pierre Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read. Now, it's a funny book. Funny title. The book is very serious. It talks about something very interesting that I could have read a particular book, and let's say, you talk to me, I read the book five, six years back, let's say it’s The Innovator's Dilemma, and you ask me, ‘what's the book about?’ You remember this paragraph and I said, ‘Oh, my God, what'd I read? I don't remember.’ Whereas, you've read a summary of it, or you've read sort of YouTube video of the person, etc. And then you're more well informed.

So book reading is not binary, that what you read is what you know. I mean, it falls into a continuum. And I think there's also, for example, a great way to read a book, like a complicated book or so, the say is don't read the book, but read the review, read the summary, read the interview of the guy, etc., right? So I think these are all ways in which you deal with information. But the brief I would say is, what is it about and primarily, what you're doing is really getting a sense of how relevant the book is.

And I think the most important thing is, for example, when I read No Rules Rules, I just went through it, over a day and a half, I immediately know on my library where it falls. Is it a seminal book? No way. Of course, there may be one or two odd people who find it the most important book. That's the thing with books. Ramanand's favorite book would never be my favorite book, or rarely. The book which impacted, for example, Harish, and turned his life around, maybe 'Oh, really? I'll say that.' Similarly, vice versa. So I think what you miss in reading is, in the hierarchy of information slots, you're not able to say how important it is. I think that's what you lose with a PIMA when somebody else does it for you, because PIMA will come back and say... [00:16:00] and that's an issue with Blinkist.

When Blinkist gives a summary, no one from Blinkist is saying, 'This is not an important book.' You know, it's only three pages, because itna hi funda hai. Ek hi idea hai. Whereas every summary of Blinkist is eight pages. Even the best book that they go through will be 8 pages - 12 pages. There's been my issue with this. So my issue with the summary is, the summary should be 3-30 pages long. For example, there's a wonderful summary review of Seeing Like a State, one of the great books by James Scott, written by Venkatesh Rao of VGR. And Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex has written a summary of his own. These are the incredible things which they say are probably better than the book, because they are contextualizing, they are reviewing it, they are chewing, digesting and bringing it out. So these are my thoughts. And I think the brief I would really say is my challenge is with books like this, which are about work, which are not going to give me great joy, like what Reed Hastings thinks, theek hai. But it's sort of like people say, right, someone was saying that I order a lot of Kindle books, if I really like it, then I order a physical book. The equivalent of this is I get my PIMA to kind of go through all of these books, but I keep hearing good, good book, good, good book, and I find it interesting, then I'll read it.

Ramanand: I just wanted to add, it reminded me of a third parallel, which is like, if you see the relationship between humans, nutrition and food, we started to learn to cook it so that it could become more nicer to eat, you can release the nutrients better, in some sense, your PIMAs are chewing the books in advance so that you have a better experience or faster experience and get more nutrition for the amount of time you spend. So there is a third parallel. [00:18:00] Back to Harish.

Sajith Pai: True.

Harish Kumar: In fact, Ramanand I had a question, which is sort of a parallel to what you just mentioned. Because I was wondering, when Sajith was saying this, is it also a function of what you are taking the book for? (A) Different sources of information that you're looking at, whether it's a book or a podcast, or an article? And what is the objective of it? What is the value of that source in your mind? And you're trying to place this somewhere in that mental library, so then does that also play a role in whether it is PIMA-able or not?

Sajith Pai: I think it's a great point, a super great point. I would never think PIMA-ing a book like Guns, Germs, and Steel is a bad idea. Or The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan is a bad idea. So there are certain books, which are... fiction, of course, is a super bad idea. So there are different PIMA versions that come there. I think specifically nonfiction, I probably put it into books which give you information versus books which give you insight. And then there is fiction, which is books which give you insight but don't seem like they're giving you insight, but they actually give you wisdom and super high level philosophical insights, so to say. So I think books which give you insight, which are about history, especially mega histories, for example. Or even historical books, etc. I think they are not PIMA-able.

And you shouldn't PIMA a book like The Silk Roads, because I don't think you should maybe, I mean, maybe you can read a ... I don't know how you would read a summary of it, I don't know. But books like any business book, I think you should. [00:20:00] Because business books to my mind also have one to two ideas and the nature of the publishing industry means you have to expand it into 240 pages, because it has to fit into that. I don't think there are more than... all of them could have been very well written articles. And that's the sad part of it. So, that's my view. I think you're absolutely right, what you seek for and I think if you're seeking information currency, being current with what is happening, then I think those are PIMA-able. I think business books are the real... business books, business podcasts are where I think PIMAs can really help. Not so sure about any of Ramchandra Guha's books, for example. So that's what I would think. I also have different theories on reading, which we can cover if we have time.

Harish Kumar: In fact, not just on reading, but when we had asked for registrations, people also were talking about note taking. So, note taking is generally when you have consumed information, just to make sure that it's accessible for you, and you're getting what you had read earlier, you are able to get to it as soon as possible. But here, you're talking about curation of the source itself. So, there are two different things.

Now you've mentioned reading, so we'll be happy to take a couple of minutes with you talking about your take on reading as well. Where do you see this fitting? Is this like a continuum? Is this like a funnel, where you're talking about curation first? How do you read? And how do you retrieve it?

Sajith Pai: Yeah, lots of questions. So I think [00:22:00] I've met enough successful people, intelligent people to know that, and I've met many of them who don't read it. So I think this took me a lot of time to kind of come to the conclusion. And I feel like there are many different ways of absorbing information. People who read are a category of people called ‘visiles’. I think I came across this term in this wonderful book called Hedgehogging, by a guy called Barton Biggs. It's a wonderful book on finance and it's very easy to read. It's about how they raise a hedge fund. So there are two types of people he says, ‘visiles’ and ‘audiles’. Audiles would like to hear, talk.

So I had this boss who would go into a meeting. Before I went to the meeting, I would read about everything about that person, and I'd give him the information on the way during those days, I was in sales, and he would listen to me and say, and he was Punjabi, 'bhai saab, bohot acha kiya. But rehne dijiye lekin', but he would go into it and those meeting would be long, three hours, or two and a half hours, because invariably it used to get into that person, that Lala would, Lala would have given us one-hour time, but then he would... 'appointment cancel karo, ye karo, aur chai lao, ye lao.’ So Rajesh would extract so much out of that person, and the thing was that two-and-a-half hours or two-hour meeting will give Rajesh much more information that I could have brought. And what I found was, I wasn't enjoying those meetings, and I was unable to draw out information. Because I was a visile, and not an audile.

So I feel like there are different types of personalities. And I think reading people typically tend to kind of, because we also write a lot, we typically... and the kind of questions we're asked in interviews, what have you read, what you read? And I think I'm trying to change that to what have you learned? How do you learn? And increasingly in tech, you come across a lot more people who are very successful, [00:24:00] who don't read, who play around, who tool around, who absorb information in a different way. They absorb different types of information. They have a very different way. It's like a driver, it's like how we look at Bangalore, look at the GPS of Bangalore and we know acha Indranagar yaha pe hai, there's a driver who's driven in Bangalore, who's not looked at the map, he sees Bangalore a very different way. Is it wrong? No, he's right for that.

So that's my first theory that I have become less of a reading fascist. That said, I do believe that I consume information through reading better. Even podcasts, etc. I transcribe and if I try as much. So there I think I do take notes. I use Apple Notes, and I think there's this whole debate over [room notes solution?]. I think it's all overrated. Use the lowest tech solution, ideally, digital. And the most critical thing in note taking I always find is not note taking, but accessing it back. And that is a challenge that I have. And everyone has. You take all those notes and you don't revisit them. Many solutions for that. But the best solution I've found is and which I have come to conclusion also is to create. Use those notes to write an article, or create a newsletter, whatever it is. That is what forces you to revisit. So I think it's also the case that you end up reading an article, and then you come out and you can't even summarize it after that. 'Haan thoda interesting laga hai.’ So, which is why I started taking notes. Maybe one or two interesting essences, just scrape something and paste it. But I also find interesting connections. Because on Apple Notes, you can actually search like say product market fit or a strategy, and you come across very different things. Sometimes it gives you inspiration to write, etc. So I think note taking is I would encourage it, but really to revisit and create. [00:26:00] So I don't know if it's all making sense, but lots of thoughts here.

Harish Kumar: It's fitting into different blocks of my mental library for sure. So, a follow-up question to that was, we talked about how we read every day, there's an internal compound and all of that. So one job to be done for us, especially for me, is that whatever we read is actually a source of serendipity. Where we have actually set aside those 15 minutes. So is that something which will actually be a price that you will pay when you have things like PIMAs? Because they will say, yeah, this is good for you. But where do you get that left of the field idea from?

Sajith Pai: There I think it helps. I subscribe to this newsletter called Delanceyplace, it just sends you a page from an interesting book every day. It's like one page could be about the Inca civilization. Another page could be about the American Indians and the challenges they face. Something is about third century Benedictine priests. Some random stuff. So it's generally interesting, and it's very short. It's like a page from a book, like typically a nonfiction book. And the wonderful thing is the surprise that you get. And I think it's the same joy that you get from going to a second-hand bookstore, serendipity. And I think serendipity is going to be very highly valued, increasingly in that. So I think the primary reason I would subscribe to interesting newsletters is to surprise me, give me these moments of joy. So I think probably, this is why you subscribe to the newsletters which curate the world, right, interesting articles. But I don't know, if forcing yourself to read that, that I don't know how that is. [00:28:00] But I think increasingly, in fact, that's why I'm saying there are certain PIMAs who curate interesting things. So you pay a certain premium for that curation, which is sort of a Twitter feed, right?

Someone like say Benedict Evans or Eugene Wei, their Twitter feed is inherently more interesting, because they're reading more interesting things. And you're sort of saying, let me see the world through your eyes. I do think that that could become a very interesting thing where someone curates, one takes an article on AI, another... So there's this substack that I subscribe to, I pay $34-$40, called The Browser. Every day, it sends me five articles. And this guy called Robert Cottrell probably has a job that I would probably, I mean, if I were to run into trouble at my job, I’d probably do things like that. I'll create a newsletter, which I send out, something like that. So, Browser is particularly fascinating because he writes these really short summaries, and I typically end up reading one article at least. So I think there is huge value in curation. There's huge value in selection by someone who's well-read.

I sort of feel like you should actually subscribe to these because it should be someone who's very different from you. So once in a while, if it's very interesting literary news, I wouldn't mind checking it out once in a while. Maybe I wouldn't read as much. The more they're like me, I find it boring. So, I'm actually looking for people who are very different. Take historical books, for example, on the fifth century, Europe or India, stuff like that.

Harish Kumar:  Again, another question that I had in mind, which probably rips from what you mentioned about the meetings that you had with [00:30:00] the Lalaji and all of those things was, is this also something like a first world problem? You know, we are all readers, that's why we have actually joined this call as well. Probably, there's a huge group of people out there who just don't read or don't even value reading. And we're probably just going too deep into peeling layers.

Sajith Pai: I do think so. I don't think it's so much like the first world so much as there's a personality type, who probably... we need a better term for it, but yeah 'readers' is like... Again, people like us who read nonfiction. I think that's what PIMA is. If it's fiction, it's fine. You probably read 50-60 pages. I don't think it’s such an issue. PIMA is not an issue for fiction. I mean, nobody wants somebody else to read, part of reading Tolstoy, even or, Jhumpa Lahiri, the joy of her writing or his writing and just going through it. But yeah, people who feel information is a stock in trade, people who probably want to kind of... Yeah, so I think there is a challenge there.

So the biggest learning for me over the last decade has been that you have very successful people who don't read, some of them are a little embarrassed, but most of them are not embarrassed. And they are as successful if not more than you. So that has been the biggest kind of issue, reconciling for me. Yeah, but I have reconciled it.

Harish Kumar: One last question from my side before I open it up for other questions. I was listening to one interview of yours, where you talked about how Blume actually outsources some functions or rather helps some of your [00:32:00] founders of your portfolio companies with things like hiring. So do you think information management/finding sources of inspiration is also something like that, which can be seen as a shared service that VC firms should actually start offering to their portfolio companies?

Sajith Pai: It's a good question. So I thought about it. I think we could try it, but it will fail. We have this challenge. Most founders are young, and they don't read much. Some of the most successful founders, we worry that they're not learning. So one of the things we started doing is encouraging them to listen to certain podcasts, etc. I find out of four or five things you recommend, they may listen to one. Maybe they listen to other stuff, too. So we all have this challenge.

My view is that the fact that you are recommending something, that if I sit on someone's board, that Sajith Pai is recommending something is a signal and that they're reacting to that signal. Oh, Sajith Pai thinks it's important for me, because I may be saying it in the context of a certain problem that they have, around letting old people go. And that's a challenge. They have some older people they are not letting go. So when I listen to a particular podcast, I feel like oh, it's about culture. How do you transform a company, and then I tell them 'Hey, you've got to listen to this,' so that is very important. And I think if I create a small division, one person curates 15 articles and sends it. I think they'll just delete it. So I think that signalling that I am doing this and this thing matters to them. Yeah, I mean, if I send them, for example, if it is Dunzo, and I sent them five interesting links, which are relevant to their industry, he'll maybe look at it and he'll just forward it to someone. So I feel signalling matters a lot. Personalized curation matters a lot with our founders. [00:34:00] And this is a challenge, which we try to solve, we're thinking of different ways to solve it. We will look at some interesting attempts this year where we try to create some sort of information packets for certain founders, or co-founders, to experiment with a few of these. But, at the end of the day, I think it's a challenge. They've actually become very successful by experimenting, playing around.

Lot of them learn by talking, because the kind of information that there is like how do you design a product in this way, how to design the UI/UX, this is not written anywhere. It's so current, and no one knows. They really want different theories. So it's best that they talk to other founders. So they're very successful people and they have their own ways of learning. There are certain founders, like who actually learn a lot by reading, so you cater to that type. If he or she enjoys reading, yeah, you certainly try and send them interesting articles, etc. Lots of this is trial and error. Again, there are no universal theories. And I'm not a fan of universal theories. But my sense is there are certain founders who are more responsive, with them, you can try some of these things. As to the others, you try and signal the most important article you should read. Like last year, for example, I sent High Output Management books to all my founders. I don't think more than two people read out of 50. That's how it is. But does that mean you don't try? Probably next time, I won't send High Output Management. I might send an interesting podcast, or I might send a summary of the three most important learnings I have had from some stuff.

Harish Kumar: Thanks for that, Sajith. Any questions from any of the other participants? Open it up right now. [00:36:00]

Ramanand: Yeah, while someone thinks of a question, I wanted to ask Sajith. What would you, if you were hiring a PIMA, what signals would you look for in that person?

Sajith Pai: I think someone who's actually a little bit of... it depends on again, how much of their time they're investing, if it's like someone who's going to intern with me and is trying out his experiment, then I would look for some bit of learning from the feedback that I give. So if I say, Hey, this is not interesting, this is interesting, and it improves. But if like Cottrell is a PIMA for me, sort of a PIMA in the sense, he's not reading and summarizing it, actually, the way he's summarizing, that there are five articles he sends and there's a short 100 word... sometimes, a gist, sometimes an excerpt from that, which kind of gives you a clue of the article and you decide, do I really want to read about Sumatran butterflies? Maybe not? I know, it's an interesting article. But it's one article, so I'd much rather read about cannibalism amongst the Aztecs. Because time is limited.

But I sort of feel like if it's a branded PIMA, and I think then you would be willing to go with what they have done. And you would say, I'll just take it at face value. So no universal things, but I would say that if for example, I'm willing to pony up, say 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 a month, let's say, and give it to someone who's like, this is remote, is fine, right? Like, it could be a student, for example. And the student, like some college, says, ‘Hey, this is like a great assignment, I'll work one year [00:38:00] with this VC or whatever, I'll work for him or her, and I'll read certain things every day, and I'm learning a lot and I'm getting to interact.’ So it's like a reading internship. That could happen, they make a little bit of money. And you've got an intelligent person.

And hopefully, all those interactions have given them some training, because you're also talking about other things in life. Once in a while, when you go to that city, or they come to your city, you'll have coffee or dinner with them, etc. So who knows, that could be an interesting model, where you have a remote reader. If that's the case, then I'd probably look for the quality of the summary, how they improve, the ability to contextualize this for me, you like this, you may like this. But also not giving more of the same, saying, oh, I've read more like what you've already read, so I'll give you something else. So some bit of someone who knows you, gets to know you, will be kind of cool. Actually, who knows, it sounds like an interesting internship idea.

Harish Kumar: Yeah… Sirisha?

Sirisha: One thing I wanted to ask was, how easy or difficult is it? Or have you ever tried getting someone to read three or four things or five things related to a topic and actually give you a summary of it? A lot of times I get stuck with that, where I have a bunch of things. And probably I'm one of those classic examples Ramanand was mentioning about multiple tabs open at the same time, right? With all the good intent to go back and read and complete and make note of it, but that never happened. So, have you tried [00:40:00] where someone can help get all of the summaries or gist of all of it together?

Sajith Pai: No I haven't. Though some folks reached out to me on Twitter saying I'd love to do this. But I haven't given it much thought. But now that I'm talking about it, I'm wondering if it's a good idea. I'm not trying to, Sirisha. But I think the incentive would be, if it's a paid model where there's a senior executive, and he or she has, someone like a PIMA who's a student or could be somebody else who's got a job and is willing to take out an hour a day or two hours or three hours every week and send this. If it's paid, then I think there's incentive to complete it for the PIMA because it's a source of alternate money, right. But yeah, you're right. I mean, on your own, I also struggle with it. I was telling them before [six?], every three, four months, I end up purging all the 100 articles. So it's a struggle. I don't think any of us will complete all the stuff that we find interesting. And this is a challenge. Is that your question? You feel like I've given you a satisfactory answer? I'm happy to try it.

Sirisha: Yeah, I think I kind of got it. But yeah, probably, I think just experimenting to see. I think like what you mentioned in Ramanand's question, experimenting with the person to actually see how it is that you want the information? And what is the kind of information you're looking for in an article? Plus, actually getting them to see multiple articles at the same time probably will get to what I want someone to actually help me on.

Sajith Pai: Yeah. It'll take a bit of time to try this out. I don't think there's a cookie-cutter approach. [00:42:00] What works for you may not be what... Somebody else might say, this is very interesting, but just send me voice notes on WhatsApp. I don't have time for even reading. It’s stressful. But in the morning, 15 minutes during the walk, you give me voice notes, over the night, I’ll listen to it, and I might ask you questions, etc. Who knows? Because fundamentally, with PIMA, you're really solving the information problem. End of the day, you are the person who's going to generate the insight. And so your time is more valuable. And unlikely, to my mind, that someone who's willing to spend time reading for you will be able to generate that kind of insight. So at best, they'll be able to summarize it.

Sirisha: And one other question, how do you go about finding people who help you do this?

Sajith Pai: I think, the way probably I would go about it probably would be like if I really wanted to, would be putting it out on Twitter, maybe. Twitter is interesting. The best search engine is, I would say it is fascinating, but the best search engine is Twitter. Because when you have more than 10,000-15,000 followers, because then it's like an incredible, real-time search engine. Like ‘Hey, I'm in Goa, South Goa, what's the best vegetarian restaurant’ or whatever, like best whatever, and it will give you 10-15 responses, you'll get three of them a bit decent. Or hey, once I had this unusual problem whereby I just couldn't get an SMS coming. And I put it on Twitter saying there's a problem and somebody has a solution saying, ‘hey, remove the number of people you've blocked. This will solve the problem.’ I said, 'what's the connection between [00:44:00] the two?' He said, 'trust me, just do it.' And I did it and like zuppp, my SMSs started coming because I've had this problem with OTP.

So for people who have at least 10,000+ Twitter followers and are reasonably decent, not all of them are Albanian bots, I think you should put it on Twitter. You'll have enough fans reaching out, if you're reasonably senior, you'll have these people reaching out. Hey, I would love to intern with you, etc., etc. So in which case you can once in a while try it. If it's paid, look, it's fine. It's not exploitation. Both of you agree on a contract and just think, they might actually be very happy. So I would probably try it because I'm of course a little more privileged because I do have a large Twitter follower count, reasonably large by the average standards. And second, a lot of people write into internships, etc. So who knows, maybe something I could try out next year.

Sirisha: Nice. Thank you so much.

Sajith Pai: Yeah, sure.

Harish Kumar: One question has come in from Joel. I'll just read it out, Sajith. 'How was your experience after doing Building a Second Brain, influenced your approach to Personal Knowledge Management, and would doing something like that be good for someone who wishes to be a better PIMA?

Sajith Pai: Good point. So it's an expensive course, I paid over a lakh for it. And I thought a lot about it. And I don't know, is it paisa vasool? I don't know. There are a bunch of these courses which have come. So there is Write of Passage by David Perell, etc., which typically people who read, etc. So I think one of the big things, I think the big learning is, note-taking is relevant in the context of creation. So a lot of it's about note-taking, and note-taking is about Personal Knowledge Management. [00:46:00] I think Tiago Forte's big genius is, really saying, why would you collect all this information? Why would you arrange it all neatly connected to, is because you want to do something with it. And that should be creation. And that's why he says, if, for example, you like collecting stuff about, I don't know, let's say, you like reading about, say football, and you collect this stuff about great managers, or really how the best midfielders play and you keep collecting this from various things. Turn it into an article. Talk about the five best midfielders and their strategies, whatever. So basically, it says create something, it could be a podcast, it could be a video, it could be like a newsletter, it could be anything. But the more you create, that's the part I'll come to, so it's not a... BSB is not about note-taking. It's about better note-taking for creation. And I think that is the big learning.

And he gives very interesting things like, for example, what he calls intermediate packets. For example, one of the principles there is that if you take regular notes, then you don't have to worry about starting from scratch. Like, for example, suppose I feel like, let's say someone says, Hey Sajith we just want you to create an article for us. You chose what you want to write about, but broadly in the startup, whatever space. So I can go to my Apple Notes, and I can type out five, six keywords, like you can say, product-market fit or pricing, for example. And typically, if I've collected some seven-eight articles will show and from that, I can just synthesize saying pricing is this, this, this, this, etc. So that is what I think fundamentally is about saying that don't ever start from zero, it's stressful, [00:48:00] like, you would be zero to one.

So just start, and for that you have these intermediate packets of information lying around, organized. And that's why you should take notes. For example, if you're a designer, you should take photographs and put it in this thing, and interesting photographs, that's what Pinterest is right. So you pin interesting things for inspiration, mood boards. Oh, I've pinned these interesting blue colours, I visited Rajasthan. And from that I am a Fabindia textile designer, I'll create this interesting blue or whatever. So I think that is Joel, my learning. I would say that it's not about note-taking. I don't think I learnt anything major about note-taking. Yes, I did learn, you end up learning and there are enough people who have mentioned their review of the course, etc. And they put it online. So it's not like you can't get all of that. I think 30-40% of the value of the course you can get by just reading stuff. But the biggest learning for me was that course is what, creation, faster creation and not about note-taking. Note-taking is in service of that.

Harish Kumar: Hope that answers your question, Joel. One big thing that I have taken from everything that you've mentioned from note-taking to PIMA to reading is what is it in service of? For what? I think that's the underlying theme of everything that you've said. Any other questions, if not, let's move to the next section. I think we can move to the next section. [00:50:00] All right, thanks. Thanks Sajith for the wonderful answers that you've shared with us and your take. We end the interview section, that is the 'Tea' section. And now I know you're also interested in a lot of quizzing. You've interacted with our quizzing newsletter and other brands as well. So I know that you have a soft spot for quizzing. So you can also take a shot at these questions that we have. They're open for all and you can post your answers in the chat window. Let me open the chat window as well. So the first question is, one of the first personal organizers is named after an abbreviation of the phrase: file of facts. Guess the name. You can post your answer in the chat.

Sajith Pai: Privately or publicly?

Harish Kumar: Publicly is fine. Yeah. You already sent me the correct answer, Sajith. Yes, Sajith gets it right. Filofax. That was one of the first personal organizers. Did you use it?

Sajith Pai: No, it's very expensive. The US one is very expensive. I've tried a lot of these diaries and organizers. In fact, I used to spend a lot of money on them. So there's a planner pad. I purchased them in the US for a long while. But finally, I've come to the conclusion that if it doesn't get on your calendar, it's not going to get done. And I now just make sure it gets on the calendar. That's all. This is my big learning. I've tried all of these things.

Harish Kumar: All right. Let's move to the next question. So which app was introduced in 2007 as a Mozilla Firefox [00:52:00] browser extension initially named ‘Read it Later’ and intended to be like a TiVo for web content? Again, open for all not just for Sajith. Yeah, Sowmya gets it right. Sajith also gets it right. It is the Pocket. Pocket was the app that actually launched as Read it Later, it was just a Firefox plugin to start with. So good one again. Someone needs to be faster than Sajith. Someone needs to access their mental library faster than him.

Sajith Pai: Yeah, PIMAster on the job. Right.

Harish Kumar: Alright, so before investing in a prototype for which famous PDA, did this inventor validate the idea by carrying a block of wood, and a whittled down chopstick for a stylus in his pocket for a week pretending it had functionality? Which is an example that we talked about prototypes.

Ramanand: In fact, we've also seen the word pretotype being used for it.

Sajith Pai: Very nice, this will be a random guess.

Ramanand: A hint for everyone is that he could hold it in his hand.

Harish Kumar: Sajith gets it right again. It is the PalmPilot.

Sajith Pai: Ramanand’s clue helped.

Harish Kumar: And then you palmed it away nicely. It is the PalmPilot. Well done Sajith for getting all the three questions right. There is definitely something that your PIMA is doing good for you. So that brings us to an end to this section as well. [00:54:00] So that's all we had for the next Future Fitness Gym Live meeting. We will be doing it on the topic of what's the best way to learn computational thinking in the future. So that's something which is relevant for people of all ages, and we will be inviting a well-known computer science educator to talk about it. So this will be in December, and we'll be posting the details of it on the Telegram channel. So that's all folks for today. Thanks a lot, everyone. Thanks a lot Sajith for giving us your time on a Saturday. So it was a pleasure.

Sajith Pai: Pleasure. Thank you so much.

[End of Transcript]

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