Hello from the Himalayas,
I’m super tired after a long week of apartment visits and finally moving while juggling a new project. The only thing I will talk about in today’s note is a riff on my belief in punching above your weight.
Punch Upwards
The more selective you are in your preferences, the fewer options you will find to meet them. After a full cycle of explore-n-exploit in your current scope-of-consideration, you will notice yourself running out of options to grow. With diminishing growth-options, the only way to avoid the wall closing in on you is to punch through the perceptive wall that defines your current scope. Question your fundamental assumptions regarding the scope that you’re searching in. Then, you need to punch upwards for a step-change in your current scope.
Taking on meaningful risks that shake you out of your comfort zone but hold asymmetric returns (high upside and low downside) is— punching upwards. Trying out a new niche, high-skill experiment in your career, living in a new city that is closer to your dream, doing that awkward talk that you’ve been trying to avoid — are examples of punching upwards.
You will need these essential ingredients to punch upwards:
Deep Clarity — the hard work of triaging your wants and unwants.
Taking Pulse of the Environment — filtering stuff that’s useful to your specific wants with a highly selective signal-noise filter.
Next Steps — Finding sync between the above two to carve out clear actions to take.
Courage for Uncertainty —taking risks with incomplete data, useful unique data that’s unobtainable before taking some risk of trying.
Mantra of the Week
When the whole world is going hard-cozy, dare to step out of your neighborhood.
Step out and Hunt the once-in-a-decade opportunities waiting to be claimed by those who can establish trust amidst a dense fog of uncertainty.
A throwback from 2019 when barbershops were a normal thing.
This one was short. You will get a proper note next week. Thanks for reading.
Until Next Week,
Vinay
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