The Magic Of Unreasonable Time
Edition #152
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 here.
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.
An Unreasonable Amount Of Time
This brilliant article by Allen Pike offers powerful insights into what it takes to be the best at your work. If you want to create magic in your work, you have to spend disproportionate time to excel at it.
Here are some compelling thoughts from the article for your thinking and reflection:
“Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.”
“The pianist whose fingers seem supernaturally nimble, the presenter whose message seems viscerally compelling, and the artist whose paintings seem impossibly realistic all wield the same magic: they’ve invested more time than you’d expect.”
“Doing impossible things feels, well, impossible.”
How can you create magic in your work? “Start small, then increment.”
“Eventually, years in, this will culminate in overnight success.”
Read the article here.
Questions That Made Us Think in 2024
In this Recap 2024 episode, our esteemed guests asked some fundamental questions about the work they do and showed how it can create impact and magic:
If you can ask the right questions, it helps you challenge the status quo and consider alternatives. It also allows you to discover and solve big problems or solutions you have never considered.
Scott Young: “How is mastery motivation different from performance motivation?”
Vasant Dhar: “Why do you really need search?”
David Nutt: “How to deal with setbacks and not be preoccupied with failure?”
Raj Dhandapani: “How do you build tenacity and avoid instant gratification?”
Khyati Bhatt: “What can body language tell you about what people are thinking?”
Dr.Vignesh Devraj: “How can I add more life to the rest of my years?”
You can listen to this episode on:
Apple Podcast| YouTube | Amazon Music
Satya Nadella: The Emergence Of Ambient Intelligence And Ubiquitous Computing
This is an excellent interview by Bill Gurley and Brad Gerstner with Satya Naddella, CEO of Microsoft.
Here are some fantastic quotes and trendspotting that you can do which can trigger your thinking and ideas:
“I think the company of this generation is already been created, which is open AI in some sense.”
“You shouldn't do things out of envy.. that was one of the hardest lessons I think we've learnt..”
“A growth mindset is a destination you never reach because the day you say you that(you have reached a destination)…means you don't have a growth mindset by definition.”
“The way Bill thought about Digital was always information management - schematize the world..”
I think there are going to be multiple winners at the infrastructure layer..”
“Advertising and traffic and what have you, some of those things go away in an agentic world.”
From an Enterprise perspective, going and doing here's my sales agent, here's my
marketing agent, here's my supply chain agent, which can do more of these autonomous tasks( is the future)…”
“Infinite Memory - We are essentially taking memory and trying to schematize it.”
“People are playing with co-pilot on one end and then are building agents on the other end using foundry.”
“Business application should be very seamless now in the same way you could
even say, hey, why do I need Excel…is one of the most exciting things for me.”
“For a customer meeting where I literally go into co-pilot, and I say tell me everything I need to know about the customer. It tells me everything from my CRM emails, my teams meetings, and the web… it grounds it. I put it into pages and share it with my account team in, you know, real-time.”
“I think headcount will, in fact one of the ways I look at it and say - our total people costs will go down our cost per head will go up, and my GPU per researcher will go up yes, that's kind of the way I look at it.”
You can click on the above video and watch it.
The Magic Of Unreasonable Time
The best people in the world, who are masters of their craft, always spend unreasonable time to excel in what they do. If achieving excellence were easy or straightforward, everyone would do it. The dedication and perseverance over time separate those who achieve greatness from those who give up too soon.
Here are some examples of people who gave themselves unreasonable time to become the best at what they do:
Bill Gates is known for his daily reading habit. He is a voracious reader, reading up to 50 books a year! He is known for taking time off from work called ‘Think Weeks’ to focus intensely on reading, reflecting, and brainstorming new ideas for Microsoft. During his early days, he spent over 16 hours every day coding and debugging software.
Dr. Abdul Kalam was known for his rigorous work ethic. He often started his day at 4 a.m. and worked late into the night on his scientific projects.
Picasso created over 50,000 artworks in his lifetime, which required relentless dedication to his craft.
Sachin Tendulkar would start training at dawn and practice for hours daily under his coach; the story goes that he often batted until his hands bled.
Mozart spent countless hours daily composing and refining his pieces, eventually becoming timeless masterpieces. He was known for his lifelong practice even though he was a prodigy, he continued to perfect his craft with rigorous discipline and experimentation.
It is said Einstein spent nearly a decade of focussed effort and refined his theory of relativity. That’s a good 520 weeks of effort!
In his early days at Tesla and SpaceX, Musk routinely worked over 100 hours a week to drive innovation and solve complex problems.
What does unreasonable time really mean?
It means motivation, obsessive practice, discipline, consistency, sacrifice, commitment to lifelong learning, a penchant for continuous improvement, staying accountable to oneself, observing and learning from role models, prioritising consistency over intensity, being patient to wait for desired outcomes, open to embracing failure, relentless focus, allocate time for thinking and reflection etc.
How will unreasonable time really help you?
Investing unreasonable time helps you avoid short-term gratification and focus on the long term.
It develops muscle memory that becomes instinctive due to consistent practice and helps build surprising dexterity when you get to do your work.
When you take unreasonable time to prepare and practice, it incredibly shortens or compresses, especially when the time comes for you to deploy those skills and perform. There’s lightning speed between your thinking, reaction, and action.
Your brain adapts to the tasks or skills you continuously engage with, reinforcing the connection between skill development and time spent.
Expertise is a long-term investment; consistency matters more than immediate results.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
You have to spend a disproportionate amount of time if you want to excel at your work.
Learn to develop the art of asking the right questions.
A growth mindset does not have a destination. The goalpost keeps moving all the time.