[CTQ Smartcast] Future Relevance at Choose To Thinq (Part 2)

In part two of this special CTQ Smartcast episode, J Ramanand and BV Harish Kumar (co-founders, CTQ) invite questions from the friends of CTQ. This conversation is full of concrete advice about content curation, learning, social media and curiosity diet.

 
 

Prefer an audio version of the Smartcast? Listen below.

 
 
 

If you haven't watched part one of this special CTQ Smartcast, visit here.

Follow CTQ Smartcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or on your favourite podcast platform.

(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)

SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

  • How to stay valuable and constantly uplevel yourself?

  • Why is it important to be deliberate about the culture?

  • How to decide which book to read next or which podcast to listen to?

  • Tips to retain and implement what you have learnt from a book or a podcast.

  • How to explore content and people on social media?

  • CTQ’s approach to problems.

  • Tools and methods to use for knowledge management.

  • Three recommendations for future relevance.

LINKS TO PEOPLE, APPS, CONCEPTS, ONLINE COURSES AND SMARTCASTS MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST

PEOPLE

APPS AND TOOLS

SMARTCASTS

ONLINE COURSES AND CONCEPTS

TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

00:00:00

Harish: Welcome to part two of this special CTQ Smartcast episode on future relevance. In part one, Ramanand and I spoke about what is future relevance, our future relevance manifesto and how we practice it at CTQ. For this part, we had invited some questions from our friends, well-wishers and customers. So we cover some concrete advice about content curation, learning, social media and curiosity diet. So go on, and listen, as we reveal some trade secrets.

00:00:45

Harish: So going to the next point in our manifesto, staying valuable and up levelling, again, anything specific that you can talk about, which we are doing and Choose To Thinq?

00:00:57  

Ramanand: So we realized that this is important, but not urgent, right? Even for us, even though we may profess future relevance, we are humans. And so there is always something pressing, there are other priorities, there is procrastination, all these things. So we developed this point of view that we should spend at least 15 minutes each day on future relevance in some form or the other. And often to do that you offer a bouquet of say, double that amount of things to do that can keep your future relevant. So we started, for example, the Reading Compound, about three, I think we are close to hitting 1400 days of reading one book summary every day. And most people, a lot of people we know don't like book summaries, especially their readers, they find it too, too small to you know, you can't do justice to a book in a short summary. But I think I've realized that we use it very differently. We use it almost as a source of randomness. Because if I want to have a conversation with you about hybrid work today, tomorrow I might be having a conversation with someone else who's just picking my brains on say, the onboarding question, how can I re-imagine the whole world of onboarding, and he comes to me because I'm not an expert, If an expert would probably be so far deep down that rabbit hole like they would just give the same way, they would say, you need to have this sort of a party packed with your bottle, and with your logo on it, and a bunch of chocolates for the family. But this is really about transcending that. And so my taste should come from a book that I heard on design thinking, your taste should come from a gift that someone in an automobile company gave to their suppliers. And that's what we put together. So we've said that, let's read one book summary every day. Sometimes we don't really like the book summary. But invariably, we learn one new thing every day. And it's trivial, but it adds up, it compounds over a period of time. So the reading compound is a small way to be future relevant every day. We spoke about Smartcasts. I think it's a hugely underrated way of learning what is going to be valuable because, one, you're talking to people who are ahead of you in the curve, just perfectly fine. All of us cannot be early adopters ahead of the curve in everything. You will see Choose To Thinq people ahead of the curve on something and laggards in others. I take myself as an example. I'm not a great technology device adopter, I'm usually way behind the curve. But I have the next best thing, which is accessible to people like you who might go and investigate a new device or we spoke recently to Max Haining about teaching the world how to do 100 days of NoCode because it looks like NoCode is going to be a big part of development. It's going to turn everyone into a developer. And so just the fact that we could approach him. He said, “Yes,” we had a great conversation, we are so much better informed about NoCode that it's a learning channel for us more than anything else. And so then you also have more sort of deliberate ways like we have a weekly future fitness session, we talk about books that we read, we invite guests to come and tell us about things like reinforcement, learning from the world of machine learning. And so this constant, keeping aside that time filling it with what potentially could be a source of value in the future. And then we do a lot of interesting experiments from time to time. So I think these are several examples of what we do without overwhelming our day today.

00:04:45 

Harish: Right. I think what's been interesting about the future fitness session is, I mean, there have been practices like sharing, learning in companies for a long time, right. And usually, it starts off very nicely and then it tapers off. And then that session is also that slot that is used for other things. I think a couple of things that we've done differently is to, A, try to protect that slot as much as possible, right. And B, we have kept it open. It's not just about resharing something that we've learned. But yes, we know that that is an opportunity as a platform where we can share stuff that we are reading about courses that we are doing. So it almost becomes like an output that you can aim for. What if I'm reading something I know, next month, I can take a slot in the future fitness session. And I know that preparing a presentation will help me reinforce my learning as well, right? And then we've got people to come in, we have tried out different platforms, we've tried some of these apps. And we found out that together, we can actually use this well. So we’ve adopted it into our way of work as well. 

00:06:11  

Ramanand: And I mean, in some sense, look at what it has turned you into right, you are sort of the de facto tech implementer, though I come from a technology background. So you often take the lead in, say developing or exploring an app because you've learned a little bit of NoCode, and you can actually do it. And so I think you spoke very validly about things we've done to protect it. So I really do feel like for anyone who is trying to learn as a busy knowledge worker, they really need to have that slot and protect it, like a lioness protects its cubs. So the future fitness session is something that we try and do and I think we have a 95% uptime rate on future fitness sessions. Then you have to have that place where you're encouraged to share your takeaways. You engage with the material that you're learning. So whether it is you doing NoCode exploration, whether it is someone taking a course, we have had colleagues who come and talk about writing related courses that they have taken, and they come and tell us about it. And so that act of generating that takeaway just helps you engage with that content so much more. And then also because we spoke about showcasing aspects, which is so important for that value creation. Some of these also generate initial drafts of what we boringly call ‘artefact’. But it is like a prototype of a Smartcast. It is a prototype of a presentation, a thought leadership piece we want to talk about. And suddenly you realize that you have this, it's one of the biggest challenges anyone has been doing, working on their social capital is what do I really say? Or, you know, how do I say it in a very polished manner. And we know that getting to that polished manner requires you to go through that poor draft, that ugly draft, that pencil sketch you spoke about earlier. And so without knowing after that one hour, you have this, this ugly artefact waiting to become that next one that you can show to the world. So it has these multiple effects. I think just in the same way there's a Smartcast can have multiple effects, they help us make sense of the world with each other. And they also have this great outcome that you can share.

00:08:37 

Harish: Right. Yeah. And what about, you know, being deliberate about the culture?

00:08:44

Ramanand: So I think we've had culture, but we've not been that deliberate about it. And let me explain how. So today when we think about what are the components of a deliberate culture, one is that you need to have clearly identified or articulated your culture like our colleague Sirisha likes to say, culture is there, whether you like it or not, usually, it is unsaid, it is practised, but not recognized. So why not articulate it. Why not define it, why not capture it? And so we know that it's important to kind of capture these things down, it's important to collect those stories and not leave them for your 25th-anniversary dinner. And so, I think we've developed a culture over a period of time, which is about things like curiosity, things about sharing, things about experimentation, things about compounding. And so what we've started doing now, we are in fact, in the middle of that exercise of deepening our Cultural Manifesto, as we call it. The culture manifesto has things like, what is your vision? What are your values? We already had one sort of a draft version of it, but we're doing one more rigorous exercise around it to create that very deliberate aspect of defining the culture. We've been guilty of not capturing our own stories as well. So hopefully, viewers, listeners listening to this, will see this very soon. So that's putting together our stories as well. But the fostering of culture, through the kinds of things like we just spoke about through the reading compound, future fitness sessions, all that have been channels through which we have fostered internal culture and reinforced that kind of culture. So I think we are in the process of deliberately, further deliberating and creating that deliberate culture. Because we are a small team we have sometimes it's been easy for us to just do it between people. But I think now we're taking a more deliberate approach around it.

00:10:49  

Harish: That’s right. So let's move to the last section of this Smartcast, where we'll come to some tactical advice around future relevance and stuff that people have asked us, you know, a couple of questions came in through LinkedIn, and other channels as well. So I will bring up those questions. And let's take turns to answer. I'll add to whatever you're saying as well. So the first question that came up was, how do you pick up the next book and decide to listen to the next podcast?

00:11:23  

Ramanand: Okay, so this is going back to our possibilities over predictions. Another variation of that is, you don't need to be doing one thing at a time, you can be doing multiple things in parallel. So the question actually is, how do you just surround yourselves with books and keep picking them up, keep sampling them from different times. The mistake a lot of people make is that they say, “Okay, I have to pick one book.” And that becomes a very important decision in their life at that point, right. So like the bookcase behind you, if you have an open bookcase with a glass window on it, then you can pick from different shelves at different points, and you can stop them. So first is to reduce the size of that judgment, I think this is where that compounding approach or seemingly makes it a smaller decision than it needs to be. So in my case, speaking for myself, there are two-three things that will always come. One is that I've taught myself not to worry about the cost of a book. I'm sort of interested, even if it has a weak interest. And if it really truly is affordable, most books are affordable. If you're a working professional these days, this is just added to your pile, and I'm not even using the word queue, I'm saying add it to your pile, its day will come someday. But that decision of having added it to your pile will make that future day more likely to come. So I will pick it up from listening to recommendations of people, there is really no secret to it. The secret if there is at all an open secret is about doing it. So I will get recommendations from fellow Choose To Thinq people. We record a monthly Incite Your Month, where we have to give one recommendation to our viewers. So then it makes us think of what I've read recently, or what my colleague has read recently. Or we will ask our network and ask them to recommend it to us. So there is really no stronger recommendation engine than your network in my case.

00:13:27  

Harish: Right. I think, yeah, just to make it more concrete and tangible. I think what we end up doing is we always keep our antennae up, right? Wherever there is a mention of a book or an author or article, just go check it out. Right? A lot of times what I've seen people do is postpone it for a later time, they'll say okay, “I'll check it out.” And, you know, we know human memory is the most fallible thing in the world. So you are going to forget about it. So one thing is to go check it out. Make notes, I think that is one thing, which I've done, I use a very archaic way of doing this where, if I'm carrying my phone somewhere, I'll actually send an email to myself. So most emails from Harish to Harish are these kinds of things, right? Because I want to check out the next morning when I have the time to actually do this. So I don't miss it. But that's one thing. And show notes of podcasts, articles, references, and one thing that I've been doing, which may make some of our Smartcast guests feel uneasy, is a lot of people have bookcases like these. So, you know, when I'm asking questions and they're in full flow, I'm just trying to look at, you know, what are the books that they have in their cases, right, because again, that's a great way to build. I sort of use this as a reference point how I started, this is one tip that you had given me back when we used to go to the British Library, right? The first place that you would look at for books were books that were being returned. So they had a space where all the people returning books would be kept for some time before the person could actually go back and place them on the shelf. Because those books are the ones which are being read. There's something good about those books, which is why they've been rented, and they're being read. So the chances of you finding a good book is higher there in that slot. So similarly, look at the bookshelves of people. So yeah, next time any guest comes, make sure that I can read those books.

00:15:50  

Ramanand: I just wanted to add a couple of things, I realized that I was giving a more systemic answer. One is that I do. It's like the equivalent of bookmarking, right, so I will use my Amazon wishlist to just add, so it is that even lower cost commitment, right? You don't even have to purchase the book. All you're telling yourself is that I think I'm interested in this book, currently. I do use my Amazon wishlist. That's my default destination. Because practically every book can be found on Amazon. And if it's not on Amazon, I'm going to struggle to get it anyway. So, you know, use your wishlist, use some kind of bookmarking service, it could be that. It could also be if you see a book at someone else's place, take a photograph of it, create a channel for yourself, which is like a group on WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, whatever it is where you're the only member. And you can keep sending yourself notes just like you send emails to yourself.

00:16:48 

Harish: Right. Another useful thing is to take I mean, if you're on Kindle, get samples. It's the next step to adding to your wish list. So yeah, next question. Most people read books or listen to podcasts, but they are not efficiently able to implement the things that they learn. What is your process for reading or listening to podcasts and a few tips that you can share with others? 

00:17:14

Ramanand: Yeah, so again, first, I want to start with a sort of reassuring aspect to this. One is that if you're viewing this, you are a human, your brain is designed to forget unless the information is considered very important to your brain. And most times, we will forget, so you are not alone if you think you cannot retain information. But, science also tells us that you have to take additional steps if you want to retain information. So that is where you need to focus on and then the implementation can follow. So what I've started doing, once I recognize this, and I kind of analyze, when I remember and when I don't remember is that I do take notes as much as possible. I've started scribbling on paper, books, which I did not do earlier, I take Kindle highlights very liberally. I don't try to think whether this is really a highlight or not, it sounds interesting, I can discover a use for this, I can post it on social media, I want to refer to it, I just go ahead and highlight. Sometimes when I use an application, like on my phone that is the Kindle app and not the Kindle itself, I will use different colours to mark different sorts of outcomes. So I think just go ahead and liberally take notes, capture it in the moment. And then the next stage will be the retention system. So like we said, you know, go to a future fitness-like session, if you want to come and use a future fitness session to talk about something you are exploring, that's your output channel, get in touch with us. So all these different output channels, like Incite Your Month, our posts where I read daily and post a takeaway, all become reasons to engage with the content, post that retention. Then we've also had this approach, it's almost like Readwise, that tool right, which you can use to resurface information back to you. We have something similar internally that we do on our internal reading compound. So that's the next trigger and just create that retention. Because you know, you're not going to return everything at first glance. What do you do?

00:19:33

Harish: Yeah, I think that's the most important thing I would say in sort of solving this problem. First is acknowledging that you got to forget about and that memory decay is going to happen. You are not going to remember something forever. So then what do you do about it? Being very deliberate about these outputs, right, having some destination where you can talk about it, post about it helps a lot. If I would say all the things that I have read and listened to or watched, where I did not have an output of it have more or less disappeared from my memory. There will be some knowledge that I would have gained out of it, which will compound unconsciously. But if you ask me, what is it that was there in that book, I will struggle to tell you, but once I've done something, yes, I will remember that.

00:20:29  

Ramanand: I just wanted to add a little bit of nuance, just building on what you said, which is that we also don't want to give you the impression that most reading is therefore useless or most consumption of information is useless. There are other psychological effects like once you encounter something, you will start paying more attention selectively to it frequently so that your environment will provide those kinds of triggers. So do consume. And I think, Tyler Cowen, the economist and podcaster that I said this, that, to read a book, actually, I need to spend 57 years of my life, that's the time it takes to read the book. Because what he's saying is that all the accumulated wisdom you have so far will actually help you read faster, better, smarter the next time. So it's like compounding all over again, you start very slow, you trudge very slowly, but then you suddenly find out that speed of consumption, your speed of accumulation, all do improve. The final thing I think I will mention here is that, try a spaced repetition tool, I use Anki. I started experimenting with it, I'm still a novice at it. But there are some people I'll mention, there's a person called Michael Nielsen, who has spoken about how he has used Anki to learn, you know, or consume scientific papers. He's a physicist. And so he needs to remember and revisit a lot of papers. So he's even turned that into a space repetition form. So I think to recognize the fact that you will forget, also recognize there are conditions under which you will remember and try to use tools to maximize that.

00:22:06

Harish: Yeah, and one other thing that I would like to add here, a lot of people have been talking about lately is not having this guilt of leaving books halfway through or whatever. I think that sounds counterintuitive, right? You say that you should read more, and you can also leave books halfway through. I think just being open to it makes you free, suddenly, when you know that you have that choice. And I think this is where that whole idea also comes in where you are using what you have learned earlier, you know what is being talked about in that chapter, sometimes, and it's not like there's no use of that chapter, somebody who's encountering that topic for the first time needs that building block. But you don't go and start reading the alphabet today, right? You assume that you know the alphabet, and you actually start reading the words. But for a child, they have to start from the alphabet, and then they proceed to words and sentences. So if you are at a higher level, go ahead, make use of that advantage you have of being ahead in the curve. Right. So I think that is, again, very important. Both with podcasts and books, so be more liberal be ready to sample more things, and leave things if they're not working. Right. The next question that has come in is how do you explore content and people on social media? So I’ll go first here.

00:23:40  

Ramanand: Yeah, I think I wanted you to go first. Because you've been doing a better job of it than me. So go ahead. 

00:23:46

Harish: Yeah. One thing that I've learned recently is using a lot of these lists and keyword searches on platforms like Twitter, and LinkedIn, where these hashtags again, like, wherever, whenever somebody uses hashtags, I have a look at it, at least. I have certain lists on my TweetDeck interface for people who talk about some aspect of HR, remote work, and things like that. I have a separate list for cricket, which is the one thing that I don't like to mix with work, and that's my guilty pleasure. But yeah, that has to be there. Right. So using these lists and keywords, I think is very important. The minute you get some of these, you know, keywords, try to also look at other keywords that are being used in that tweet or in that post. Because they will help in discoverability. So one thing is to look at people who have written an article, who is featured on a podcast, go follow them if they're talking about stuff that is of interest. That's like the direct way of doing it. The other thing that I immediately do is look at the people that they are following. And you may not want to go look at the entire list, but quickly look at, say 50-100 people, see if you can sample a few, look at them. Just do that because it will add variety to the sources of content that you are consuming, you need to keep adding that because otherwise, you're going to get, you know, the echo chamber waiting to happen. In some cases, I deliberately go seek out people that I absolutely don't like or their views don't match mine, I seek them out. There are some publications that I have a paid subscription to, simply because I want to keep that I want to tell myself that, yes, I paid for this publication. So I need to go check out what they are publishing because I want to build that multi-faceted view. And it's not that I dislike the general trend or slant of that publication or that site. But there are a lot of things for which the jury's out, right? You don't know whether it's a fact or an opinion. So the more opinions you collect, the better your worldview is going to be. Right. So that's one thing. And the other one is to subscribe to as many newsletters as possible. This is where I think I've done something which is very interesting. And I feel very happy about this hack that I came up with. I subscribe to a bunch of newsletters, a lot of them give very good recommendations, I find out about new people to follow and sites and all of that. But like with anything it is a lot of content, right? My CTQ mailbox was full and my Gmail inbox was full. And then suddenly, one idea struck me. So I created a new email id. And now I use that for all my Substack subscriptions and all my paid subscriptions, all of that goes into that one inbox. So nothing else goes in, it is content that I know. I'm interested in reading. So now I don't have the guilt during the week or on any given day that these newsletters have come in, and I have not read it. But when I have time, I know that I just need to go into that inbox. And then I go there. That's the dedicated time and space to consume all this great content that I know is out there and going to make my world better.

00:27:49  

Ramanand: So I think it is again back to that system approach. One thing I think we all had to unlearn was going from a world where knowledge was scarce to where knowledge is now abundant, and there is a hosepipe that only becomes bigger and bigger each day. And so I remember being in a mode where, you know, whoever I follow on Twitter, I really want to read as many of their tweets that they have posted in the last 24 hours. And thus not really adding more people to my feeds and trying all sorts of ways. So now I think it's the other way. You have to really think in an abundance first mode, where it's going to be sampling, is going to be taking bets on sources and not really worrying too much about getting that decision right. You can always unfollow people. As you know Navin Kabra, one of our Smartcast guests told us you can always unfollow, so you should be quick to follow people and you should be equally quick to unfollow them, if needed. Similarly, I think with the newspapers, newsletter subscriptions, I've taken a leaf from your book and set up that separate account. Two things I'll talk about. One more thing I have is that I wish Twitter had better lists management because it really is a game-changer according to me. So it's a very simple way to do it. If you identify five topics in what we call the curiosity diet, in my case, I want to know things about learning, I want to know things about the future of work, I'll create lists for them. And so then you can actually, instead of going to Twitter, you're going to your future worklist. And I think it is a huge game-changer for a lot of people. One thing I've done deliberately, which seems old fashioned, is to actually increase my newspaper count. I've actually subscribed to one more newspaper these days. Because the conventional wisdom these days is that don't subscribe to news because news keeps you unhappy. There's always this front page sadness, and it's always going stale and all that I in fact found it the other way because news now breaks like every second. The newspaper is actually the resource of slow news now. So by the time I see my news the next day, a lot of it has gone stale already, which actually makes it easier to jump to those few things which are genuinely interesting, or they are more analytical opinion-oriented pieces. So I think the newspapers still do a very good job, they also have the advantage of not distracting you by having popup ads and clicks, new tabs to open, I cannot, as much as I try to open a new tab to explore one new thing, I'm just stuck with a piece of paper. And so I find it a lot easier, it helps with my digital consumption, and so on. So paradoxically, I've actually added a newspaper. And I find that is a really good source of content, it still is true. And I must confess that Aashish Chandorkar, someone that we interviewed, as for one of the Smartcast, talked about his newspaper reading. Again, I took a leaf from his book to do or his newspaper to do that.

00:31:07 

Harish: I’ve also done the same, in fact, that has also given me some other subscriptions, which I've been happy with. 

00:31:14  

Ramanad:

Yeah and they actually do feature people on social media. So if you're looking for people to follow on social media, your newspaper can actually help recommend a few names.

00:31:24  

Harish: Right. Yeah. Let's move on to the next question. How do we identify problems at CTQ, and some tips on how others can do the same at their companies or organizations?

00:31:37  

Ramanand: So I think we spoke about the importance of reflection earlier. Reflection is great, everyone should do it. You've always been told to try journaling every day, or try and do a retrospective. So people do do these, but it's also about the frequency and the deliberateness with which you do some of these things. For reflection, you don't need to go off-site into a fancy hotel and get people together. Can you really make reflection a compounding habit? I think that is the problem. It's sort of a meta way to identify problems. So I think we are, we've been very deliberate about reflection. We do that as part of small debriefs after events after activities that we do. But we were discussing yesterday that we're still not happy with it, we still want to take it further. So I think really setting aside time for reflection is a huge starting point. And we would recommend everyone here to do it, it's hard to add a new habit, a new routine, a new ritual, for your team, and for yourself, it is really worth that effort. I will also add that there are techniques like say pre-mortems that can help you do proactive reflection, if I can call it that. So practices like that, really learning from the mistakes of other people. And not going there is how you can identify problems. And the third thing I would say is that we do try and capture everything in our internal source of knowledge called Asana. So if there is something we want to act on a problem, it is like that bookmark that we said for books, it's there different places for different things, so even problems, best to put it down somewhere best to kind of put it in an Asana task, best to send an email to yourself. So just capture that problem when you encounter it, having that antenna open. So I think we're just repeating ourselves now. And then it is that system to go back to it.

00:33:46  

Harish: I think you mentioned Asana and, you know, reflection about events, and debriefs. I think one thing to reiterate here is the fact that we have reflected on everything. So it's like a matter of process, right? You go and you know, deliver a session, it could be a workshop, the end of the workshop because Asana is the virtual home of all things CTQ that's where, you know, you don't just go and close a task, you say that this is what happened in the workshop, anyone else wants to add something is who has also attended that or through the course of that task or that mini project or project leaves their comments there. So now, next time when you encounter such a situation, you will go and check that right and that that is there. I think the biggest challenge is people not capturing it there. So just thinking of that the life of that task or that event does not end when the event has been delivered or that project has been delivered. But just add that extra five minutes or 10 minutes and assume the closure on Asana as the actual closure of that project, I think being very deliberate about that has ensured that we capture all these. And that's where I think we've, like, identified these problems for ourselves, and what are the things that we want to work on.

00:35:24

Ramanand: I would also say that people these days talk about learning to learn, right? But they don't think of these small so-called trivial activities as learning to learn. So any activity when a Smartcast like this, there will be something that we sort of learned. And if we can enable that space, and that method to just put it down somewhere, the choice of going back to it and looking at it and learning from it. And refreshing your memory is a separate one. But that can only be enabled if you get the first step. Right. So I think, you know, when you are encountering problems, you want to capture it. And when you hear other people fortunately, again, we speak to a lot of very diverse people. And they tell us about problems that they're facing. And that in many cases is a problem that we are likely to face someday in the future. So you know, just that reflection, that documentation process is a great starting point.

00:36:21  

Harish: Yeah, and I think one more thing that we've been trying to do is writing those decision journals, right? When we talk about working with some agency or hiring someone, we say that these are the reasons why we are going ahead with this, these other conditions that we expect. So next time, if you know when the outcome of the decision, you know, comes to the fore, you can actually then evaluate that, okay, this is what you expected. And this is what has happened. So just being more objective about these kinds of things helps. And that's how you become a better decision-maker as well. So I think that is also something which we started doing. We have a folder on our Google Drive called Decision Journals now. Last question, and this one is from one of our well-wishers and friends of CTQ Ashwin Bhandarkar. He says, can you talk about a conscious practice of knowledge management, any tools and methods you use? We've covered some of these things over the last few questions. But if you want to address this question specifically.

00:37:29  

Ramanand: Yeah, so I'll talk about two things. One is some just to recap some of the concepts and the tools that are very useful. And the second is to give something specific, if you look at my phone, or my devices, what will you see installed on it, that enables something like this. So similar concepts, spaced repetition is a tool that is a concept that is really very handy, recognizing that certain types of knowledge, they need to have that emotional connection with what you already know. And so some of that is going to stick better if it is a story, or if I can find a connection to it that I am interested in. So for example, if I find a sporting connection to it, or I find a computer science connection to a concept, I'm probably more likely to add it to my set of knowledge. So that's something I try and do very deliberately. I also take occasional courses. I'm, again, not very hesitant in trying out courses. So just to give you an example, this year, I completed a set of courses on Futures Thinking. This involves activities like scenario planning, and so on. But I'm also taking a course on appreciating Carnatic music, because there are multiple things you can learn. One is the actual subject matter, which I have a passing interest in. But also how that teacher teaches, what is the system that they use to deliver these courses, everyone has their own different approach to it. So if you look at the kinds of apps that I use to enable my conscious knowledge management, there is Asana that I take notes in for, for links, because I do a lot of curation at work, I use a combination of Pocket, which is a great app for capturing links. I also have an extension on my Chrome browser, it's called One Tab. And so you open tabs and it adds upright? And God forbid, crashes and takes everything with it. So I use one tab, it just creates a single tab with a list of links in place. It's a very one-click action. So very simple to use. I use Notion for monthly reflection. I have a list of things that I want to reflect about, and a lot of these pieces of what I learned that month can all come in that. I also use an old fashion diary for a journaling habit that I'm now proud to say I've been able to hold up for four months straight. So that again, I capture small things. Like, what did I learn today, or what is on my mind that I want to get off my mind. So things like that old fashioned notebook are also good. Kindle highlights. Kindle is a big part of my book reading. So Kindle highlights, and the Kindle app has a lot of features like you can export that and so on. I also wanted to mention Duolingo. I do a little bit of 15 minutes of learning French and Spanish. And so Duolingo is my place for learning language. So there is a Blinkist, our book summary app. The other thing I've done, therefore, now you're wondering, all these different apps, right to kind of just put them together, they're all physically co-located, the icons are together on the phone screen. And finally, I think, getting familiar with online learning platforms, whether it is Coursera, whether it is edX, whether it is 42courses, another very quirky platform, everybody offers things in a different way. Get familiar with them, browse them, go through them, and suddenly you will then discover courses that can help you stay future relevant. What about you?

00:41:30

Harish: Yeah, so some of the things are very similar. By the way I have also done one Harvard course - Handel's Messiah and Baroque Oratorio. So that was interesting. Again it was just about going and exploring something that's just not part of my regular learning universe. So otherwise the tools are very standard, standard in the sense that things that you've spoken about. Journaling has been something which I've been doing for, I think the last 2-3 years now, been fairly regular about it and sort of I summarize my day, you know, things that I do, things I felt happy about, things about ways which I could have, you know had a better day, all these things help. It brings closure to my day because I usually do it just before sleeping. Using Asana for Choose To Thinq related work and also personal reminders of things that I want to go and explore. The separate inbox that we spoke about for subscriptions and some things that I've done like these experiments, I created this personal CRM tool using Airtable, trying to hit two birds with one stone. Not really kill, but you know, do experimentation with NoCode. Also create something. It is a project for my own use, right? Which is where I try to tag people with different topics that they will be interested in. So, you know, since it's a question for Ashwin, Ashwin’s tags are like, you know, music and cryptic crosswords in my database. So these are the kind of things that help in just putting that whole thing together, all the personal knowledge that we're talking about, whether it's people, ideas, concepts, stuff that we know about people. I also use Notion for keeping track of people that I want to interview for CTQ Smartcast. I have a separate podcast as well where I interview my friends from my B-school just to get a sense of where they are in their career and what they've learned over the last two decades. We actually have a monthly self feedback document that we follow. So I made a point to make it a weekly reflection, so every Thursday I fill that out treating these future fitness sessions as destinations where I can talk about whatever learning and reading ensures that I have the discipline of capturing my thoughts and these are the kind of things that have helped me very concrete things that somebody can pick up and use.

00:44:46

Ramanand: I also, since we have to thank Ashwin for this question, I must also say that people like Ashwin and many of our Compound subscribers are another reason for us to consciously practise knowledge management. So everyone who's on our multiple compound groups, the Daily Reader, the Future Stack, the Social Capital, there is always something that they share with us in the course of them going about their compounding habits. That is a great way for us to also share information with them. So while this might not be a conscious practice, it is that opportunistic practice of knowledge management. If someone like Ashwin says something, I can add something to that conversation and which I would have got from some recent reading of mine. So for instance, yesterday, one of our groups had read an article about design and what it tells you about designing for people who are not in the mainstream thinking of design. So this could be for instance older people and since all of us are going to be old at some point, this is actually something we should care about. And we had such a wonderful set of comments by different subscribers. One of them is actually a trained designer and someone else mentioned how we feel design for so-called disabled people is actually useful for everyone else. And someone like Rory Sutherland who's an ad guru and talks about behavioral economics, has also said that if you design a ramp, you can actually, it's good for everyone. It doesn't have to be only for old people or who are wheelchair users. So something like this I can share with my team and all the Compound subscribers that we have. And so you are also, Ashwin, a source for us to practice knowledge management.

00:46:42

Harish: Great, Yeah. And on that note we bring this to an end. But before that, you know, I won't ask you for future relevance of X as we ask all our guests, but I'm going to ask you for three things, three concrete steps that we can recommend to leaders or up levellers on what they should do for a future relevance.

00:47:08

Ramanand: So I think you have said this before that we need to keep reminding ourselves and everyone that what we did 12 months ago shouldn't be what we're doing at this point in time. So making oneself obsolete or disrupting oneself is the name of the game here and to that, I think we have three things to offer which are more timeless in nature, you can implement this but still stay relevant in the future. So the first thing for leaders of teams or anyone just taking charge of their own future relevance is to come up with a manifesto for yourselves. If you're trying to build culture in your teams, come up with a culture manifesto that tells you what your values are, what your mission is, what your goals are, where are you headed? And there's some interesting techniques and templates to do that. At an individual level, there are a lot of reflection questionnaires that you can do but essentially it's hard work for a lot of us but try and put down in writing as to where you know what are the scenarios that are ideal scenarios for you and then work backwards? What do you do to get to those scenarios? I think it is not so much about just saying that this is what I want to have so much money in the bank. A lot of work is really to think of these different scenarios and pick what you want. That manifesto can really help and the culture manifesto, we have an entire process around that now, so we know it's hard work, but we know it is work worth doing. The second one is to keep yourselves relevant, pick up a compounding habit. Another compounding habit could be reading every day, it could be journaling every day, it could be expressing yourself on social media every day and there are many others. Some people, for them, engage with the arts or engage with a hobby every day. Could be a compounding habit.

00:49:08

Harish: Experimenting could be one.

00:49:10

Ramanand: Experimenting is a compounding habit. So when you do compounding habits you want to do it frequently, you want to do it for a long period of time and you also want to capture some of these little artifacts and takeaways and then use that to get better over time. So build one for yourself, audit your habits, see which of them is a simple habit, which is a compounding habit and which are habits that you need to get rid of. And the third one is to you know we consume a lot of information these days, we spoke about the culture manifesto, so you know where you're headed, and now you're building these little compounding habits that take your step by step, but we also think you should identify a diet, a new kind of diet, we call it, you can call it a culture diet, we can also call it a curiosity diet. Think of those areas that you want to deliberately invest your time learning about, consuming information, this could be with you yourself, it could be with your team. So if you want to foster a certain sense of shared culture in your team, whether the team is co-located or whether it is distributed, it really doesn't matter. Use a culture diet where you are, let's say you are one of your values is openness or one of your values is resourcefulness. One of your values is curiosity saying that is not good. Can you share information about someone who is curious? Can you point out a leader that practices curiosity work and share that information? Can you ask your team members to just tell us how they were resourceful in the last six months? Create that space for informal conversation but around some of these topics which we call a culture diet. It is like you cannot force this down their throat where they're offering that plate to them.

00:51:05

Harish: Right on that note, I think you've given these three very concrete recommendations. Make a culture manifesto. Start a compounding habit for yourself to ensure a culture diet for your team. I think both leaders and up levelers will do well if they start doing this. So on that note. Thanks a lot for spending this time and sharing what we have been doing, revealing some of our secrets and in the process we're having fun and we are counting on some of our history as well. Thanks.

00:51:44

Ramanand: Thanks Harish.


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