Best of Web- Nov 27th, 2020

1. Mimetic traps, explores how “not pausing” to ask the question “Why does this matter” leads us to live a life of imitation, where suddenly we are in an unfulfilling zero-sum game that we never wanted to play, competing with people whose opinion we don’t really care about. I recommend sharing this with people who are at the cusp of major career decisions.

2. Randall Stutman has dedicated his life to understanding leaders. In this conversation with Shane Parrish, he shares his insights from over three decades of research on this topic. One of the terms he uses is “Admired Leaders”, leaders who are excellent at getting results and in inspiring people. I have always held that the role of a leader is to enable business outcomes, while enabling their people to reach their highest potential. I was intrigued enough to check his online course.

3. My favorite new app is airr for podcasts. The app lets you highlight and share notes from podcasts. You can also connect this with readwise and bring your podcast notes to your favorite note taking tool.

4. There are some subjects that I would love to relearn again, as if I was back in high school but taught in a way that made these subjects fun and practical. That interest led me to stumble on this post of 13 classical Mathematics books for lifelong learners. Of the recommendations, I started reading the Joy of X and love it so far.

5. I have been eyeing Masterclass for a long time and finally gave in, for the chance to learn tennis from Serena Williams. So far my favorite has been listening to Margaret Atwood’s insights on creative writing.

My new article:

1. Few questions to ponder: During my career, I have found tremendous value in framing questions correctly and in being curious and tenacious about answering them. The best questions are the ones that are never satisfactorily answered, but the process of answering them leads to deep insights and growth. This article lists the top five questions that I am in the pursuit of answering.