Welcome to the second issue of the newsletter. Although, I didn’t read much this week, but I hope you will find value in whatever little I’ve to share.

Weekly Finds

[Podcast] Shaan’s Masterclass: How to sell a business for millions: I know I don’t have a startup to sell :P & most probably those who are reading this might not have a startup to sell as well. But nonetheless, it was a great, fun podcast to listen to. Some great advice which made sense to me (although I have zero credibility to say this).

[Podcast] Relationship Advice - How to make big decisions about love, money & life: Renowned Stanford professor Myra Strober talks about her ‘5C’ framework to make more thoughtful life decisions. Let me share a brief description of the above mentioned 5C framework

  • Clarify: first and foremost you need to clarify what is it that YOU want. If needed, sit down with yourself, shutting off TV, podcasts, youtube etc. or maybe go for a walk and then ask yourself what you really want.

  • Communicate: communicate your goals, your life values to whomever else who is involved in this decision. Always remember communication = talking + listening. This step is closely tied with the earlier step i.e. clarify. When communicating with other stakeholders of the decision, you also get more clarity.

  • Choices: Broaden your choices. Don’t limit yourself just by the initial set of choices that you started with. This step closely relates with the next step i.e. CheckIns, because when you check in and talk to other people, you get to find out about more and more options, broadening your choices.

  • Check Ins: Talk to other people whose decisions you admire. Don’t ask them what you should do, rather ask them what they would’ve done. Although make sure you don’t go around asking a lot of people. Also, always remember while you should value other’s opinion there can always be a agenda or bias in their thinking.

  • Consequences: Try to anticipate the short and long term consequences of your decision. Understand whether a consequence is reversible or not. Think of possible fallbacks as well if the consequences doesn’t pan out to be good.

The podcast goes in much more depth and explains the framework with some practical examples, so you should definitely listen to it. I particularly love how in the end Myra goes -

You make the best decision possible & it may turn out not to be satisfactory because of something out of your control. Being confident in your decision making doesn’t mean you made the right decision. It means you made the best decision that you were capable of making at that time.

[Video] The Lallantop ‘Guest in the News Room‘ - Raghu Rai: In this episode, Saurabh interviews one of India’s best photo-journalist Raghu Rai. We’ve heard a picture is worth a thousand words, well in Raghu Rai’s case a picture says even more than that. Especially his PadmaShree awarding work on 1972 Bangladesh War. In the interview, Raghu Rai explains his connection with Indian partition and how that experience helped him capture the Bangladesh war with much more empathy. Major projects of Raghu Rai that were discussed in depth in the interview were

  • 1972 Bangladesh War
  • Bhopal Gas Tragedy
  • Emergency and Indira Gandhi’s assassination
  • Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale & Akal Takht picture

It’s not only about the historic pictures that you get to listen to in the interview, but the story telling of Raghu Rai is so so good that you just shouldn’t miss it. It is one of my favourite interviews in the ‘Guest in the news room’ series of The Lallantop.

What I’m reading this week

I am afraid to say I didn’t get much reading done this week. I have started with ‘Never Split the Difference‘ by Chris Voss and I’ve read ~12% of the book so far. The book is about you should navigate the situations where you are negotiating (in most of the real life situations, we are).