Putting Things in Perspective
Hello Friends!
This week – an eye-opening blog post that puts our lives into perspective, a talk on how boredom can lead to creativity, and a startup idea that could disrupt the food industry.
Startup Idea that Caught my Attention
How many times have you come up with a food or beverage idea that was either a low-fat, high-protein (or a combination of the two) variant of an existing product in the market? We all know how big brands use food labs to come up with new products. One such lab that has worked with brands like Chobani, Chipotle, and Sweet green, among others, is called Alpha Food Labs.
Photo Credits: Future Market
According to the website they help businesses with the following skills:
Developing irresistible recipes, memorable brand designs, and smart go-to-market plans..... develop and launch our own food products dedicated to democratizing healthy and sustainable food.
Here’s what I think. It would be groundbreaking to develop a company of a similar mold but cater to prospective startup founders who want to start a restaurant or launch a food item/beverage with little/no experience in sourcing or mixing ingredients. The lab would act as incubators and charge a fee or take equity in the startup in return for helping with recipes and with sourcing ingredients. I believe this can allow a new breed of entrepreneurs to enter the food industry. What do you think?
An Eye-opening Blog Post that Got Me Thinking
A friend of mine shared this blog post with me and I can easily say that it’s one of the profound pieces I have read on putting things into perspective. Through sketches and stick figures, Urban breaks down his life into the number of winters he has left or dumplings he’ll be able to savor, to illustrate the idea that our lives are not as long as we think they are.
The part that really got me was his section on Relationships. Urban explains based on the amount of time we have already spent with our loved ones, our parents, siblings, our friends, and especially those who we don’t live close to anymore, that we only have a very small percent of time left to spend with them.
It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.
Living far from home and people I grew up with, I found the relationships section especially relatable. Like Urban, I only spend around 10 days a year with my parents and siblings and the same friends I used to see 4-5 times a week, I get to see them maybe a couple of times a year.
My Takeaways? Why bother with mine when Urban sum’s them up so perfectly:
Living in the same place as the people you love matters. I probably have 10X the time left with the people who live in my city as I do with the people who live somewhere else.
Priorities matter. Your remaining face time with any person depends largely on where that person falls on your list of life priorities. Make sure this list is set by you—not by unconscious inertia.
Quality time matters. If you’re in your last 10% of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you’re with them and treat that time as what it actually is: precious.
An Inspirational Talk I Attended
I was fortunate enough to attend a talk by Bruce Daisley, author of the bestselling business book The Joy of Work. Daisley worked as a Vice President at Twitter’s London office where they regularly scored among the highest in workplace satisfaction across all global locations, mostly due to his work on developing a positive workplace culture. Daisley started his talk by giving examples of some practical tips on improving employee satisfaction. Here are a few examples:
Not allowing employees to hit ‘Send’ on an email they draft outside of work hours to ensure they aren’t expected to work outside hours
Encouraging call center employees to take lunch breaks together which improved employee retention.
Photo Credits: YCN
While these tips are great, the point that really hit home with me was when Daisley mentioned that allowing yourself to feel bored can improve creativity toward your work. The examples he provided in the talk involved people who claimed to get their best ideas when:
…walking their dog or doing the dishes. Or, in the case of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (famous for creations like the West Wing among others), while he was took a shower. To take advantage of this surge in creativity he had a shower installed at his office where he finds himself taking 8 to 10 showers a day!
Takeaway: Living/working in a culture that prides itself on being “productive” 100% of the time, (e.g. any capitalist nation) it’s crucial that we leave some unstructured time during our workdays to encourage us to think creatively about our life.
Shower Thoughts of the Week
Here are this week’s shower thoughts (via Reddit):
Being attracted to celebrities is easy because we haven't had the chance to be turned off by their personalities.
The colder the water given to you to drink, the more you trust it.
Disabling your remaining alarms in the morning is the ultimate trust in yourself.
That’s all for this week!
Cheers,
Rohail
More of one thing, less of the other? Comment here or reach out on Twitter (@rwk93) - Instagram (ro.khan)