[From Pixabay]
Good morning,
Santosh Nair is executive editor, cnbctv18.com, and a long-distance runner—we exchange notes with him every once a while. The other day, he shared some passages from Rework: Change the Way You Work Forever by Jason Fried and David Hannson. We loved it and promptly got a copy. The part on planning had our attention. Here’s an excerpt from the book:
“Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control.
“Why don’t we just call plans what they really are: guesses. Start referring to your business plans as business guesses, your financial plans as financial guesses, and your strategic plans as strategic guesses. Now you can stop worrying about them as much. They just aren’t worth the stress.
“When you turn guesses into plans, you enter a danger zone. Plans let the past drive the future. They put blinders on you. ‘This is where we’re going because, well, that’s where we said we were going.’ And that’s the problem: Plans are inconsistent with improvisation.
“And you have to be able to improvise. You have to be able to pick up opportunities that come along…
“The timing of long-range plans is screwed up too. You have the most information when you’re doing something, not before you’ve done it. Yet when do you write a plan? Usually it’s before you’ve even begun. That’s the worst time to make a big decision. Now this isn’t to say you shouldn’t think about the future or contemplate how you might attack upcoming obstacles. That’s a worthwhile exercise. Just don’t feel you need to write it down or obsess about it. If you write a big plan, you’ll most likely never look at it anyway. Plans more than a few pages long just wind up as fossils in your file cabinet.
“Give up on the guesswork. Decide what you’re going to do this week, not this year. Figure out the next most important thing and do that. Make decisions right before you do something, not far in advance.
“It’s OK to wing it. Just get on the plane and go. You can pick up a nicer shirt, shaving cream, and a toothbrush once you get there.
“Working without a plan may seem scary. But blindly following a plan that has no relationship with reality is even scarier.”
Have a good day!
In this issue
- Decoding Saudi Arabia
- Jane Goodall on being human
- Good mornings
Decoding Saudi Arabia
Anuj Chopra, now a Knight Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, lived in Saudi Arabia during its most transformative period, as chief of bureau at AFP, based in Riyadh. Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, the crown prince of the kingdom, has been behind many of these changes including lifting the ban on female drivers and reining in its clerical class. However, that's only one side of the story.
Chopra writes: “MBS is dragging the country by the hair, his most ardent supporters tell us, writhing and screaming into the 21st century. But the untold stories in my countless notebooks attest to another reality: How fear is holding back the nation and its people. Understanding the ‘new’ Saudi Arabia requires understanding the anatomy of this fear…
“The ever-shifting red lines are now so confusing that ordinary citizens are constantly terrified of having the ‘wrong’ opinions. Many in the intellectual class—who could contribute to MBS’s reforms with constructive critiques—choose to remain silent and find safety in acquiescence.”
In what might resonate with authoritarian states, Chopra writes towards the end, “Government supporters justify the repression as a sort of coup-proofing at a time of historic reforms, a dangerous period that could provoke a backlash from arch conservatives and political opportunists. The spectrum of opinion, they tell us, is simply too broad and diverse to accommodate all views. But that justification completely ignores how fear is corroding the country from within, inhibiting its own lofty ambitions.”
Dig deeper
Jane Goodall on being human
The recent edition of GQ has an interesting interview with the famed primatologist and anthropologist, Jane Goodall. Answering a question on what her feelings were when she first realized that chimps are as capable of war and aggression as humans are, she highlighted the importance of making the head and the heart work together.
“We're so like chimps, biologically, we share 98.6% of our DNA with them. And so to me, I came out very strongly on the side of, yes, we do have aggressive instincts. I mean, you can't look around the world and say, we haven't. Aggression isn't just learned. So it helped me understand chimps are even more like us than I thought before.
“But it also pushes you to stand aside and say, ‘Yeah, but we are different. Animals are way more intelligent than we used to think, but we're different.’ We designed a technology that enables you and I to speak from different places. And this most intellectual creature to ever walk the planet, nevertheless is destroying its only home. I always say most intellectual, I don’t say intelligent because an intelligent creature doesn’t destroy its planet like we are doing. It does seem there’s been a disconnect between the clever brain and the human heart. And I truly believe that only when the head and the heart work together, can we attain our true human potential and regain wisdom.”
Dig deeper
Good mornings
(Via WhatsApp)
Found anything interesting and noteworthy? Send it to us and we will share it through this newsletter.
And if you missed previous editions of this newsletter, they’re all archived here.
Warm regards,
Team Founding Fuel
(Note: Founding Fuel may earn commissions for purchases made through the Amazon affiliate links in this article.)
