Adaptability

"Be Adaptable" is something people advise. But how to "be" adaptable?

What do we need to do to be adaptable?
Well, it actually involves 2 things: Building capabilities and being flexible in approach.

So Adaptability = Capability + Flexibility

The biggest challenge

Learning the right things has been the biggest challenge always!

There are too many topics to learn, too many books to learn from. Nowadays, there are too many podcasts to learn from and too many articles online (substacks nowadays) and too many newsletters to read.

Here's an idea I am working on: Distilling the sources continuously.

1. Pick the topics you want to learn.

2. Pick your sources.

3. Pick which are going to be the active ones.

Once you have done enough (6 months to 2 years) of a particular source, you would see them repeat the same concept / thoughts and by then you would have fully understood, applied in various cases and mastered the concept and you can skip them or follow them passively.

For example, I have buy and read every Outlook Money from 2004 to 2006 during my last year of studies and first year of earning. By going through enough of the personal finance topics, including life insurance, investing, operational issues in investing, stock markets, diversification, tax impacts, etc., I had mastered the concepts of personal finance, the motivations of the parties, the terminologies used and what they really meant and even knew certain aspects which 99.99% of the agents dont know (e.g. Insurance under the Married Womens' Property Act).

Even today, after 20 more years, the rules have changed a bit but the concepts remain the same. If I am doing any personal finance, I just need to read up of the latest rules on them (usually the taxation is what has changed.) Most others are available in niche dominant websites.

Yesterday, I read a very interesting article on PPFAS flexi cap fund https://betatoalpha.substack.com/p/the-flexi-cap-that-forgot-to-flex and I could fully understand this as I was following this fund and the RBI rules at 2008.

So now, I need to follow an insightful commentator to know the changes and impact rather than read through the basics of Outlook money.

Similarly, I started following Dan Koe (a modern philosopher) and a top five at Substack today in that category about 2 years ago. His concepts have not only been thought provoking but changed the way I think and do work. After reading his long articles for over 2 years, the gains I achieve from each new article are lesser and I don't mind skipping them as I know the crux of his viewpoint.

But, there are more such newsletters I follow these days:
Admired leadership, Shane Parish Brain food, Leila Hormuzi letters, Dan Martell, zerodha university.

Apart from this, I have a target to complete about 50% of the farnam street podcasts this year.

I know I am not able to keep up with the onslaught of all these inbound mails and new content.

But I have removed a few recently followed newsletters and plan to re-prioritise my learning sources every 3 months or so to get what I need to at that point in time.

If you have an adapting learning system, let me know the details in the comments.

Key learning of the year

"Do not believe what you see/read in the media"

They show only about 40% of the truth and without the remaining 60% there is no context and it is engineered to misrepresent, misguide and misunderstand.

Multiple sets of information have made me come to this conclusion:
1. The Iran war while listening to some actual youtube podcasters who have actual domain expertise

2. The happenings in USA from an instagram channel that actually gives voice to the people

3. A defence industry insider telling me how the news are not to be believed and the real truth behind a constantly published story in the news.

4. A villager on how voting is forced in the electoral booth (which would not be published by any newspaper).

5. How come there is no video of the actual damage suffered by Israel from the various missiles of Iran?

This below comments give what objectives are served by these mis-publications.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/et-commentary/pax-trump-hegseth-remix-americas-gun-laws-dehumanisation-and-double-standards-have-been-its-ticket-to-virtue/articleshow/130177189.cms

Real truth is buried deep inside things and we need to learn a sense of detecting the actual dead body beneath the shit it is covered up by.

Learning areas

There are so many things to learn. 

This are the areas I am learning and / or applying myself and will continue to in this year.

Biggest areas: 

Where is humanity headed? What are the underlying power struggles whose symptoms are seen in war,  hoarding, policies, deception of masses, etc.? How is technology/ rich people moves going to affect humanity?

The Arena:

Global markets - commodities, companies, stock markets, innovations, the underlying assumptions, the unknown games big entities are playing.

Company:

Technical details, organisation of information, defining optimality and tuning business flows and functions to this optimality.

Human nature - Theories / Frameworks / Philosophies:

To understand human behaviour, purpose, power games, persuasion, logics, focus, getting better.

Self:
Identity, Purpose, Skillsets.