Thinking on Success & Models for Building Success

Divya: I think a lot of people love the freak out model

Kahran: There's the, like, freak out sort of model, which I think a lot of people love,

Divya: Which has a corollary of push everything on tinted line and then just do it in the crunch time, and then you feel like you've made m a lot of progress.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: Hi, I'm Divya.

Kahran: Hi, I'm Kahran.

What is confidence and doubt, and where do you need to be for success

Divya: And this is thinking on thinking.

Kahran: Okay, I think we should do the first one. which is the. What is confidence and doubt, and where do you need to be for success? I think the side of it that I was thinking more about was, like, how something we were talking about a little while ago that, like, you.

Kahran: That in thinking about where you need to be for success, you can think about in terms of, like, what sort of blocks do you need, and then how can you assemble those sort of blocks? Anything that kind of, like, additive way of thinking about it is really just. It's like a nice sort of model, because it helps you not. It helps you feel like you're making progress, even when you're often not, like, making visible sort of progress, if that makes sense.

Divya: What other models are there?

Kahran: that's a good question. There's the, like, freak out sort of model, which I think a lot of people will,

Divya: which has a corollary of push everything until deadline and then just do it in the crunch time, and then you feel like you've made a lot of progress.

Kahran: Yeah, well, I think a lot of people don't. they go after it head on. Right. I think that's maybe the more typical sort of model. It's like, oh, you know, I want to be a singer, let's say. Right. And I'd like to perform, like, in front of people and, you know, perform in the way that I'm singing. And so you're going to go out and say, okay, you know, what do I like? The things you need to be. Obviously, you need to be a good singer. You need to get exposure to the space that would be kind of just going into it head on. Whereas if you take a step back from it. Okay, what are the components of being a good singer? Well, you need to be good at negotiation. You need to be good at being able to make people understand what you are good at. Ah. you need to be good at articulation of your talents and being able to figure out, what does it mean to be in the right place at the right time. And those are all separate skills that if you think about it in that way, then it's less. I don't know. It could be less overwhelming, but also can help see transferability in the skills that may or may not be as apparent when you kind of are looking at it as a conglomerate, as part of this big thing that you want.

Divya: This is interesting because very honestly, I have always thought about it, assembling different skills and how they would be connected. The easiest way would be, you know, when you want to get back. Like, if you ask somebody, I want to get better at writing, people would say, just read a lot more and like, critically analyze and, like, read out out of the genres that you write in. Read outside of your interest, and, like, read the classic, see how things have changed over time. Like, try to understand it. And I think there is, like, this weird sort of, our, brain is good at pattern recognition, and we can do it in ways that we can't cognitively consciously, sort of pinpoint. I think that, like, I've always had an understanding of it in a weird way. Like, when I first started doing design, I also somehow understood that I also need an understanding of psychology. Very few people, at least, like, you know, ten years ago, very few people were directly talking about the impact of psychology on design. But there is a direct impact, of course, how people behave. And when you want them to do certain things, those are very closely related. But that's why I asked, what are other ways? Because at least from my perspective, you have to think about in an ecosystem format in your head. Like, in your head, you're constructing an ecosystem of knowledge, and, somehow you're going to get to the other side of, oh, now I have enough data to solve this problem. I don't know. I don't know if that, like, even relates to the initial question.

Kahran: No, I think it does. I mean, it's not. I'm sure. I'm not sure if it would be that helpful. because it's, I guess, or maybe I should ask a question to make it something more helpful. So what would you. How do you feel? Like, like, what does one do to get, if you are not, like, as has happened to me many times, right. Like, you know, like, I'm looking at a problem and I'm not sure. Right. Like, I didn't have that moment which you kind of had with design where you're like, oh, the right thing for me to do now is to learn psychology. Right. like, how do you, when you're not sure, then what do you do?

Divya: I mean, I guess m. Okay, how would I do it if I were to now go and learn something. Right. so, for example, these days I'm, like, trying to write more, which means that I'm, like, trying to read a lot more. That is like, a side effect. Like, this year, I have read way more than I think I have ever read in, like, in terms of speed compared to ever before in my life. And I think that, like, that's just a side effect of I want to write more, so I should be reading more. It's just natural. Right. if I were to, for example, if I were to try to learn a new language, I would do things which are, like, gonna help me build vocabulary. Right? Boring. Just vocabulary building stuff. But I would also, like, try to immerse myself in, like, media from that culture, even if I don't understand it. Just getting a hang of, okay, this is what the rhythm of the language sounds like. This is how people interact with each other. It doesn't directly like. So, for example, if I was trying to learn Arabic, watching a lot of Arabic shows is not going to improve my arabic vocabulary. I won't be able to construct sentences, but what I would be able to understand is how people in that language speak. So this is. I don't know if I have sent this to you, but, like, I was listening, to a very interesting episode of 20,000 words recently where they were talking about the windows, audio landscape, and especially, like, the work that they did in windows seven. And, what they were trying to do is.

Mhm: How do you decide when you're on the road to success

So they had a recognition that because of all of the beeping and all of the noises that people are seeing from the devices, it's already becoming very psychologically disruptive. And they didn't want it to be as disruptive. So what they did was, like, they sort of collected, for example, hello, greetings from a lot of different languages, and they tried to see what is the intonation? How is hello? Or, you know, what are you doing here is something new, right? Like, and in different languages, they just, like, sort of mapped out what was the pattern of it, and then they used that sonic pattern as the melody.

Kahran: Interesting.

Divya: And somehow because of that, the entire, like. And how you constructed it is like the entire language of how the, like, you know, operating system is speaking to you. All the different beeps and nudges and sounds, they form a collective, I guess, like language. And in most cases, people don't think about things in terms of, we are constructing a language of patterns. They're all going to be related in some way to each other while they're distinct. The example they gave was, if you're in a rainforest, you'll be able to distinctly figure out what sound is what, without feeling alerted or disrupted by everything. And they wanted to construct that kind of a thing, of course. Interesting, very simple. Like, it's very simple sounding, but it's a way more complex to do because, like you said, you don't feel like they're making progress.

Kahran: Well, so that, that's actually where I would. So, like, it seems because, you know, the question we started was like, was it was, was on the road to success, right? Like, how do you, how do you, where do you feel like you're getting there? And so I'm curious about that particularly then. Right? Like, so if you're, if you're approaching something, like how you were just describing, how do you decide when you're successful?

Divya: I mean, if you were to make bread for 80% of the process, it wouldn't seem like the bread is being made. There is no bread until the last ten or 20%. Like, you put it in the oven and, like, you know, at the last point you'll feel like, oh, now there is bread.

Kahran: Sure. But in that case, you know, I can look at, you know, the, like, what does bread look like at different stages, right? And I would know whether or not I'm like. And it's. It's happened to me, right, where, like, sometimes I'm like, oh, this bread should not look like this at this stage. And it gives me worry about my eventual success. But, what do you, like, how do you establish those kinds of checkpoints when you're kind of approaching more sort of.

Divya: You could ask people, like, for example, I don't remember where I was feeling, but I was reading somebody's advice for how, to spend time on your novel or something, something about writing. And they basically said that one third of the time will go in plot construction. And this is like, you haven't started writing. You are just making plots and you're just figuring out beats and you maybe have, like, outlines, of what the characters will be like, what they will do. These are the locations. You're doing some amount of burn building, but of course, a lot of it is. So you can, like, you know, maybe let's say writing a novel takes you two years for the. That means that for the first, like, you know, almost eight months, you're gonna feel like nothing is being made. I'm not doing anything. And eight months is a reasonably long amount of time to stress yourself out. But one, like, the easiest way would be to look at somebody and be like, oh, this is how long it's gonna take. And also to not discredit pre production work in general. And I feel like this is a problem with tech industry. They just don't respect pre production or post production. That's why, like, so many things are basically like, They just fall apart very quickly if you just poke at it too hard.

Kahran: Interesting, interesting.

Divya: Like, of course there is, like, the danger of you haven't produced anything for too long and you don't want to fall in that trap. At least, like, what helped me was just to do things like, just to make smaller scope.

Kahran: Okay.

Divya: It's, it's harder to get, to assess. For example, am I making progress in a game? If I think that the timeline is going to be three years, maybe I'm making progress, maybe I'm not. Is this going to contribute to something? But if I know how to make a game in a month, then I'll have a good idea of, okay, this is what the game making process is going to be like. So then maybe if I try to make something in six months, I'll have, okay, this is going to be expanded. You know, this is, for example, why a lot of people don't just start with making feature films. They make, like, shorts, which are like, three minutes long, and then they make like a 20 minutes film. not a 20 minutes film. They make a lot of those. But, at least, like, that's how I would think one could divide. Like, I also think that one has to think, what am I using successful? Is it fuel to keep me going forward? Or is it a metric for, am I going in the right direction?

Kahran: Interesting. How do you think about it?

Divya: I think, thankfully, I don't know if it is internal wiring or if it is somebody. I personally feel like it's just, okay, am I moving in the right direction? I'm, okay with dropping things in between if they don't align with these days. I'm also okay with dropping things for a while and then coming back to it once I know that I have the requisite skills. It's a little bit like, you know, imagine if you wanted to learn a language and you're like, I'm gonna write an essay. And then you realize, okay, the essay that I want to write, I don't know half of the vocabulary. I'm going to go learn the vocabulary, and then I'm going to come back and write the essay that I want to write. It's a little bit at least like these days. That's what it's like for me. I want to use small markets of successes. I'm going in the right direction, but not necessarily as the fuel. The fuel this comes from. Am I doing a thing that I want to be doing? Because if I'm doing a thing that I'm motivated to do, then I don't need another fuel.

Kahran: Yeah.

I think focusing on success can lead to an empty feeling in some ways

Divya: How do you feel about, like, how do you think about it?

Kahran: I think progress is very encouraging. Right. And so that's why I was kind of asking you about where do you see progress or how do you see progress? I think I actually find sometimes that the eventual moment can be a little bit like, I don't know how to exactly say it, but, like, almost not quite a letdown, but like, something in that vein.

Divya: Yeah.

Kahran: Right. And it's just, I think because, especially when you've spent a lot of time into something like, it's, you know, if you were. You're spending, let's say, like, I don't know, 10% of your day or your week or something into bettering yourself in that way. And now if you feel like you've achieved that success now, there's just, there's, you know, there's 10% of your time that now is unattributed. And so that kind of sense of loss, I think, can be a little bit, it just be jarring and disconcerting. Right.

Divya: Yeah.

Kahran: So I think that, that. So I agree with what you're saying. I think that the focus on success can kind of lead to this, it just can lead to that empty feeling in some ways. Right. Where then you kind of are always chasing the next thing and more and more and more. Whereas I do think that it feels.

Divya: A little bit like probably what postpartum depression would feel like. You've spent so long, like, you know, caring for this thing, spending, planning, and now it's a, thing, and it's just out there in the world, and maybe you will spend energy more on it or maybe you wouldn't, but, like, it's not the same relationship as before.

Kahran: Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I think that's true. but I do think progress has an interesting kind of, connection with being able to. To achieve your goals, I think. And I think, we didn't define success when we started this, but I think success a lot of times. Is that right? It's like, are you achieving the goals that you set out to achieve? Can I pause? Do you agree with that notion.

Divya: So I have like, recently I have been thinking about this slightly differently. So you know how like when you are. I don't know. Okay. So I probably don't have the right words for it. I'm probably not in a space that I can articulate it very well. But if you were to look at like a web, you know, like you can represent a system, like a web, any sort of organic system. An ecosystem would be a good example. So you can think about nodes, but you could also think about the bonds that are between the nodes.

Kahran: Okay.

Divya: Should I say more words?

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: Okay. So of course you can set up your checkpoints as This is a checkpoint. And this is checkpoint. And this is a checkpoint. Right. But you could also think about it as To go from this to this, something needs to happen. Like go from, to go from node a to node b, a connector x needs to happen. And you can just focus on the connector x. So for example, once I have an understanding of what needs to happen in the story, then I will be able to write the first act. Once I have an understanding of like. So then the understanding becomes the central thing rather than writing out the plot, if that makes sense. I see, like, again, I don't have very advanced understanding of this thing, but like, I was just trying to think about how we are almost always able to incorporate data and like course correct, right. So the goal that we started out on was never like, it is rarely the goal that we end on. but there is something that happens that we are guiding like, you know, towards. And I feel like it's more of a sense of what does this connection need to be like? And that's where I was thinking about it more in terms of an ecosystem. Because if you think about m it like, an ecosystem always will have this like, you know, almost self balancing factor. And like things move from one, phase to another when like those relationships are satisfied. So if there is an empty spot in the ecosystem, something will move to take space off it. It's because the ecosystem is thinking more about like how the things are related to each other. ecosystem is not thinking about anything, but like basically the system is like, it's balancing the relationships rather than like individual. The pressure of selection is on the individual moves. The pressure of selection is not on the relationships as much in a way.

Kahran: Interesting. It's an interesting notion.

Divya: And of course, like, we have had a very hierarchical, top down, kind of language, speaking of language. We have had that kind of language for success for the longest time. So I don't even know what vocabulary, which is more about just understanding, okay. Going from point a to point b will require an understanding of this thing, and it will require changes in these five things, and that's what we are focused on. Like, I don't even know what that would look like, but I don't think that when most people are thinking about, oh, I want to be promoted, they're nothing actually thinking about, I want to be promoted. Like, that end state of being a person who is promoted is not what they're looking for. They're looking for, oh, I will have more money, then I will have more status. People in office will respect me more, like, they have a bunch of other riders, which are about their relationships and their position in the world. It's not as much about the promotion in itself, but more about what it signifies, about all the relationships and what they think of themselves.

Kahran: That's interesting.

College admissions are a measure of success for many people, especially this year

That's a great example, because I was thinking about, like, you know, something topical this time of year is like, all these people are always choosing what's. What school to go to. Right. because in the US, you have to. I guess it just happened, right. But you get your admissions on April 1. You have to decide by May 1, which university you're going to go to. and then, like, that's the question that you like, you know, it's like a measure of success for a lot of people, especially this year, when it was so hard to get into school. like, I don't know. Do you know any of the stories? Oh, Shankar, my brother in law, has told me some stories, because his nieces, some of his nieces are applying this year. And just like. Like you, because there are so many kids from last year who deferred or didn't apply, and then there's this year, and then they removed a lot of the standardized tests, so, especially a lot of the Louis universities. So the number of people, the cost of the work to apply went down a lot. So number of applications went up, so admission rates just plummeted. You know, you're talking single digits. Low single digits. There are a lot of talented kids who didn't get into schools anywhere, right. Especially if you just miscalculated. It was possible. Right. so I think it's just interesting to think about some, like, some of those kinds of questions where you look at success and say, oh, you know, I've been working towards this for so long, but I think thinking about it in the calculus, you were saying, which is like, breaking up and think, well, what is the thing that you're getting from it? Right. Partially. It may be like, you know, seeing yourself in it as a certain type of athlete or seeing yourself in a certain type of social situation, or, like, you know, there's certain types of opportunities that you're trying to look and open, but distilling out those kind of, you know, yes, this is success. And then trying to break into whether those components are. You were kind of saying more, more clearly, like, what is the ecosystem that is going to make me feel successful? What is the state of the ecosystem that's going to make me feel successful? You can kind of like. Like, break the components into that view. It feels like it's a lot easier to understand kind of what we were talking about earlier. Like, where do you make progress? where can you feel like you're making progress because you're now, instead of just looking at one kind of, one journey or one aspect of the journey, there's many different components that are on their own, separate journeys.

Divya: I also. I would caveat it with the thing that, like, there is a. I mean, both of us are from prestigious colleges. Both of us have seen enough success in our career, so there's also a space of security that comes from, you know, like, how a lot of times you'll hear, oh, money doesn't make you happy. And then it's generally people who have money who are saying that money doesn't really make you happy. So I do want to acknowledge that it's probably not true for everybody to be able to define their own success, you need to have achieved a certain amount of success and have that amount of agency in your life.

Kahran: You know, the $70,000 study, right? No, that, like, money makes you happier until you make $70,000 per year. And then it plateaus.

Divya: I think. I, like, I vaguely remember, but I don't like.

Kahran: Yeah, yeah, it's something around there. 70, 80,000. And then, it got a bunch of publicity because this one CEO, who's actually based in Seattle, decided he was then going to pay every employee at his company that minimum amount. and has now become, like, this outspoken advocate for the fact that we should be paying people enough to.

Divya: Oh, yeah, I remember. He was the one person who wasn't making, like, 100 x of his employees.

Kahran: Yeah, exactly. interesting. Anyway, I think there might be something similar with success, right. That you need a certain level of just having been successful, and then you start to kind of believe, I don't know. So I just. I thought of it when you said that, because I wonder if there's a corollary with the kind of money thing.

Divya: That would make sense.

Kahran: Yeah. Maybe we should first prepare. We can explore it in a future week.

Divya: We can. Awesome. Good chat.

Kahran: Good chat. This is fun.

Divya: Yeah. Thanks for listening to this episode of thinking on thinking. Our theme music is by Steve Gomes and you can find a link to it in the show notes.