Weekly Snapshot: Making Good Decisions

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Our life is all about making decisions - as small as what to eat and as big as what to do in life. But our life’s ultimate pathway depends on a few important decisions. These decisions have the largest impact on our lives - the impact might not reflect in the short term, but if we play out the scenarios 5-7 years down the line, we can trace roots back to our future reality to “that” one single decision and a chain of events that follow.  

As I think more about how to make the right decisions, I end up with a two-body system interacting in unison:

  1. The mental models and reasons leveraged to decide
  2. The execution and handling of the aftermath of those decisions

The first one is quite important and requires deep thought and contextual understanding. It requires us to leverage mental models to think deeply about the decisions we are about to make. It includes thinking about not only us but also how our decisions will impact the people around us and how they will alter our future reality. This art of playing out multiple scenarios and determining a win ratio is supercritical and requires extensive use of second-order thinking. Once you complete your analysis, you decide - go or no go. 

The second body is all about navigating the waters. Once a decision is made, we experience the effects. The effects are not an absolute state, but rather an interactive pathway where each unfolding will depend on how we execute our next move. If you decide to party out before a test, feel prepared to handle the emotions and a poor grade after taking the test or if you decide to invest hastily, prepare yourself to handle the financial loss. How we handle the second body ultimately determines the pathway of life. 

It is quite vital to note that what I’ve described is spiral in nature. Once we decide, we face the consequences and then manage them by making another decision. It is a never-ending stream of choices.

Since time is irreversible, the rest is quite in our hands and we can always correct course. 

💪 Wins of the week

  1. Successfully integrated and tested LinkedIn Automation for Mia. It’s a new powerful feature where Mia - my AI SDR - can now reach out to customers on LinkedIn! 
  2. Built strong partnerships with LFP battery providers - paving the way for a fruitful business in the upcoming months.

🧐 Challenges & Learnings

  1. Closing leads is challenging - it always takes more time than expected. 
  2. As a manufacturer/assembler of physical products, your margin and profits are determined by the moment you procure raw materials. If you successfully procure products at a good price, automatically your margin and competitiveness go up!
  3. [Worth repeating from last week] Stay on top of mind - people are busy and forgetful. Keep adding value and make sure they never forget about you. It is the fastest way to build rapport. 

🎯 Goals for Next Week

  1. Convert over 60% of the leads into paid customers for Virtuans.
  2. Plan out the next shipment of LFP cells.
  3. Plan for next quarter at work and define experiments to help increase user conversions.

📖 My Readings

Charlie’s Almanack was truly a life changing book. Recommened! I’ll start reading Founders at Work by Jessica Levingston from YC.

🎬 My YouTube Video

[A bad pause - gathering ideas to get back in the game]

✍️ Quote of the Week

"The best ideas are extremely fragile and there is an unbelievable amount of value in figuring out a setup for not killing very fragile but potentially very great ideas."

~ @sama from @OpenAI