A recent big trend on YouTube are the “With Me” videos where people film themselves going about ordinary tasks like cooking, studying, cleaning, or exercising. More and more viewers are tuning into “with me” videos for company, in-depth information, even motivation.
Abhijit's Sketchnotes No 5 explores why FDA is recommending a videogame as a cure. What could be driving this decision. There is a a great sketch about the fear of making mistakes. Yes, there is a term for it. You can know that here and a big question - is it a curse to be a genius? Or worse still the parent of a genius? Read this compelling story
This is a situation that nobody in the world has experienced before and, therefore, this is a time to make bold bets. It’s a time to start questioning the basic assumptions and begin to design a different workplace that values everything that the previous workplace norms did not allow for. Mental health has always been something that organisations have left people to worry about on their own. Perhaps this is a time to step up to the plate, prioritise employees’ holistic well-being, and question the inclusivity of the whole process. These are things which endear people to you. You build deeper connections, and that’s one of the big ways in which you build emotional resilience.
Imagine that a business you built over ten years is going to go public in 2020. Then comes a pandemic that makes people wary of health and safety. That was Airbnb. They had to lay off 25% of the people. The way it was done is a model for many others to follow. They tried their level best to help people find other career options by engaging an outsourcing firm. Finding another job seems really hard for most people. You must read the shocking statistics for layoffs in India here
The most fascinating story of the week is clearly how Steve Jobs got 219 patents AFTER he died. How did that even happen? Jobs got 620 patents in his life time. And then there is a story about how trust between colleagues takes a beating when you do not meet in person. Yes Zoom does not cut it. It is efficient but does not build trust.
How do you learn a skill which is not yet being taught in a college & has no standard curriculum? Would you like to have job where you are highly satisfied? Of course yes… but you may be paying a price for that. Why 5GB of data storage would have been a disaster. All these in this week’s newsletter.
Tesla creates a “digital twin” of every car they sell. Data from the real car is sent to the digital twin in the Tesla office. It lets Tesla update the software in a car remotely even as it is being driven. Singapore city has a digital twin to help plan its services. Should humans have digital twins? Celebs are creating their own digital twins. Should you? But first, do you really want passionate people when you hire? And if you are a passionate person, can you monetise your uniqueness?
Do you hate selling your ideas through video calls? All of us now run meetings, give presentations and even sell ideas through video-conferences. People simply take whatever they would have done in person and present it through the camera. Teachers across the world are offering their classes online. That experience of learning online through videos is so bad that several students plan to defer their admission to next year when they can attend classes in person.
Most online classes are excruciatingly boring because they have the speaker continue for long stretches without involving participants. This can be done through polls, parallel chats, drawings, videos, quizzes, built in every few minutes. It is hard for the speaker to see the facial expressions of the learner. That is essential to build engagement.
