Morning from Advent Neel!

I woke up early (6 AM) for just this. To find a moment to write my thoughts down. Anything at all. I made a whole plan for this day — what would my super-ideal March 20, 2024 look like? It’s on a Post-it called The Plan. I borrowed the name from Mr Williams, yes.

And the first 90 mins of my day were on track. Woke up, some cardio at the gym, showered, got ready to leave — and Uber decided to be dramatic. Here’s a tiny angry rant. I am 30 minutes late in my day. Since every hour of today is counted for, this feels huge. But okay. Wiggle space and learning with efficiencies and not being super stuck and all that.

So, here I am with a SCCB + espresso shot and music in my ears. In an empty Starbucks. Wow, I love mornings so much. Why is it that I do not get my ass out of bed despite how amazing I feel before the world has woken up?

ANYHOW!

Last woman standing

I was watching an Ali Abdaal video about his meeting with Ankur Warikoo. And he talked about the idea of being the last man (wo-man/person) standing.

What this means is: You want to be the last man standing. Whatever you’re doing, you want to stay at it for the longest time. For most people fail because they give up too early. Remember this picture?

He said: The last man standing is often the winner. Most businesses fail because they are not run for long enough. Now I trust people to know that running a business does not mean doing the same (read: wrong) thing over and over again, never iterating. But to keep trying despite all odds and stick out the terrible parts.

Lesson for you and me: Just be patient and stay at it.

Infinite games

In the same video Ali talked about the idea of: Finite games. And infinite games.

Finite games: Things with a well-defined end. Think ludo, college graduation, a party, maybe a job (if you decide it’s temporary)

Infinite games: Things you wanna do forever. For me, these are also my answers to Morgan Housel’s “What do you see yourself doing in every possible life?” (Or some version of it. I can’t find it in my brain archives right now. NEED TO START COLLECTING INTERESTING IDEAS AND QUESTIONS I COME ACROSS ON MY NOTION.)

Eg: Being fit. Your business. Learning new things. Travel. Creating something, preferably pretty and artsy. Building things. Etc. Etc.

Now, Ali says, and I do too, that things you want to be the last person standing for — your infinite games — should be things you like + genuinely enjoy. If you pick infinite games you don’t enjoy, it will just show. And that the goal with these infinite games is to sustain them. And to do them for the longest time possible.

And with these things, you don’t want to optimise the fun out. You don’t want to bore and burn yourself out. You want to keep it fun and engaging for yourself — even if it comes at the cost of seemingly slowing down. Because the cost of quitting is WAY higher than the cost of sporadically taking it slow.

That’s all!