Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The Newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
It’s been an incredible 100-week journey of sharing what we read, listen to, watch, and write down our reflections and learnings. As it is always said, what you read and learn is not important, but learning how to do it and applying it makes all the difference. When you share and apply the principles and frameworks that you learn, it brings a lot of thought and clarity to what it takes to do it. What’s more, it brings a deeper understanding and meaning to many of the concepts and frameworks that are out there, which you are inspired by.
“Inspiration Without Consistent Execution Is Hallucination.”
This 100th edition is a carefully curated selection of whatever was learnt and shared over the last 100 weeks. It contains ideas, thoughts, and quotes that inspired us, which we shared with you.
We plan to share this curated selection over the next few weeks, celebrating the 100th edition, as it is an excellent time to pause and look back at all the thoughts and ideas we have accumulated over 100 weeks.
It can act as a great foundation to help you pick some of them and apply them in many things you may have wanted to do or start or continue to build your path towards excellence.
Let’s begin a dialogue on ideas learnt - Start contributing your ideas and thoughts here.
The ideas section here encourages the start of a conversation amongst us, and the aim here is to attempt to make this a collective community learning platform by learning from each other’s experiences. So, go ahead and share your ideas, experiences and thoughts. Don’t hesitate to ask questions and seek answers for them.
Good engineering is as much a matter of intuition and non-verbal thinking as it is of equations and computation. - Eugene Ferguson(Edition #001)
The Best Product Managers are those who have the heart of a designer, the mind of an engineer and the communication skills of a diplomat. - Amit Ranjan (Edition#001)
Competitors rarely kill start-ups, execution does - Paul Graham(Edition #002)
Digital Marketers have a ‘Single Interaction, Marry Me’ Syndrome - Neil Hoyne (Edition #003)
Hire for hunger, not a checklist of qualifications - Zainab Ghadiyali (Edition #008)
Doing something you don’t have any love for, but just for a paycheck, can damage you as a person - Marcus Buckingham (Edition#010)
What is success? - “Peace of Mind attainted through self-satisfaction in knowing you made an effort to do the best of which you are capable of.” - John Wooden (Edition #017)
A startup is a temporary organisation designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. - Steve Blank (Edition #020)
Our education system robs children of their sense of wonder - Prof. Manish Jain (Edition #006)
True money is one which has no liability and gets to at least hold its value in good and bad times- more in bad times than in good times! - Lyn Alden(Edition #006)
For Personal Effectiveness and Performance Improvement, small improvements done consistently yield more results than big improvements done inconsistently.(Edition #001)
Mastery requires conscious, repetitive practice. (Edition #003)
Incremental changes in innovation in different industries, when aggregated over time, have a profound impact (Edition #004)
Reframe failure as an essential ingredient for growth.(Edition #004)
A career plan is what you make of it. Nobody can draw it up for you.(Edition #011)
When it comes to careers, don’t shortlist a career early and burn early. (Edition #014)
How you could still plan Life better when things that you didn't plan hit you. (Edition #002)
Practice Analytically. Perform Intuitively. (Edition #006)
You have to learn the art of marrying the ‘rational’ with the ‘irrational’ when managing projects. (Edition #011)
Customers come for the tool in most product platform businesses but stay for the network. (Edition #014)
If there is no uncertainty in your idea, then it may be worth taking a relook.(Edition #002)
Billionaires don’t work for the money. The ones who really grow rich are the ones who keep working.(Edition #002)
The best co-founders are the ones who know what their strengths and weaknesses of each other are. (Edition #004)
Learning to embrace failure is an art. (Edition #016)
What is the one skill I am so good at, nobody can compete with me until I die? (Edition #011)
Excellence is about doing the right thing when nobody looks over your shoulder. (Edition #013)
Unlearning and relearning are essential for personal growth and development. (Edition #021)
Earning a degree is no more an insurance for a stable future. Mastering the degree of difficulty in solving problems is a better indicator! (Edition #018)
Why are great workplaces, excellent company culture and attrition not correlated? (Edition #019)
Culture is what each of us in the company does when nobody is looking.( Edition #019)
The biggest corporate overhead not measured is the ‘Cost of Follow-ups’ - Share, comment, or start a conversation here if you have ideas on how to calculate and control this corporate overhead. (Edition #005)
Great leaders know when to lead and when to be led - Leadership Interoperability - Start a conversation here if you have ideas on how to measure the ‘leading and being led attributes’ of leaders.(Edition #007)
Professional degrees don’t make you a professional. Professional mindsets do - Can you contribute or share ideas on assessing and measuring one’s professional mindset? (Edition #015)
What’s your method to soundproof yourself? - Let’s start a conversation here on how you have seen others practice or think one should practice it. (Edition #017)
Develop a fine balance between career aspirations and personal value systems - How can we achieve this? Do you have any ideas on people who you have observed have done this? What can we learn from their approach and discipline? (Edition #005)