Brunello Cucinelli
In the early days of my career, right after my college, a friend recommended a book. I was mind blown by it. The book is Maverick by Ricardo Semler. I know the terms like holocracy is quite popular now, but two decades ago, Ricardo had pioneered a unique way of running an organisation and building his business, Semco. Being transparent about balance sheet with employees, educating them on how to read the P&L statement, all employees having the authority of deciding their salaries as well as their bosses. It was a revolutionary read. Its been more than 15 years since I came across the book. When someone recommends this book (which rarely happens because Semler is not Buffet or Covey), I feel a kinship with them. The only group, who I know has recommended this book was Jason Fried and DHH.
Today, I learnt about another businessman who has such contrarian views. He also has a successful business. It is Brunello Cucinelli. He is called “king of cashmere” by The New Yorker. He owns a fashion brand that is known for making luxury cashmere sweaters.
But what invoked the memories of Ricardo Semler, is his way of doing business. He gives 20% of his company’s profits to his charitable foundation in the name of “human dignity”. He pays his workers wages, that are 20% higher than the industry standard. He does this because it allows his company to encourage and continue the Italian craftsman traditions.
But the cherry on the cake is that his company is a publicly listed one. It makes a revenue of 350 million Euro. The story of Brunello is such an inspiring and heartwarming one.
In the next coming days, I want to dig more on to this and think through, why I like these kinds of business and how they got started.
What Is the Reason Behind Ilayaraja’s Genius?
I was listening to this podcast on a new book by David Epstein arguing for more generalists. For a few minutes, he talks about research on learning and what works. My antenna got tuned up because it is my area of interest. All the research about learning agrees on a few things that work well. It is “spaced repetition” and “interleaving”. Also, if you want to learn a topic better, first take a test or a quiz about it. After that, if you read or learn, you will be primed, and you can absorb and retain it well.
I have written about a Tamil music director, Ilayaraja. He is a genius. His body of work is incomparable to any musician in the West. He has composed music for more than 1000 movies. Indian movies have at least five songs and 2 hours long background score. Every film is like an album of various genre of songs. Ilayaraja has produced consistently great work at high speed. I have always been curious about how he got started and what was his edge over others.
I got some glimpse of it by connecting the podcast of David Epstein to Raja during this new interview. Raja was mentored by Master Dhanraj. Raja is interested in music from his childhood days. He is surrounded by his siblings and other people involved in music. (This is an excellent setting for exploring the scenius, but I will reserve that for a post later).
Raja knows to play the harmonium but he may not have formal training in music. He doesn’t know how to take notes or how to mark the chords. But Dhanraj Master puts him in a situation to do that. He also gives feedback to Raja. The same happens with another knowledgeable mentor of Raja, GK Venkatesh. Venkatesh pushes Raja to play the guitar, who earlier had only basic knowledge about harmonium.
This is precisely what David Epstein calls a kind learning environment.
A kind learning environment is where the next steps are clear. All the information is available, the goal is right in front of you. Every time you do something, feedback is immediate and perfectly accurate. And so if you just do it and are cognitively engaged, you get better.
Raja is lucky to be mentored by Dhanraj Master and GK Venkatesh. He gets challenged positively by his mentors. He, of course, gets feedback on what works or not in a visible manner. That feedback loop definitely works wonders in the later stages.
Raja knows music from his childhood days. He is part of a group of people interested in music. He learns it formally. He gets a chance to be better in his craft by shipping consistently. Shipping consistently here is composing for various films day-in and day-out. This is probably fertile ground for spacing, repetition and interleaving.
Spacing & Repetition - Raja was busiest at his peak. He gets to try various genre of music for various different situations. He had constant shipping of content, with a closed feedback loop. The feedback is reception, applause or criticism of the audience. It either works or doesn’t.
Interleaving - This is probably my assumption which may or may not be accurate. Interleaving is a process where people mix, or interleave, multiple subjects or topics while they study in order to improve their learning. By the nature of film music and Raja’s interest in various other kinds of music and arts, he is immensely benefitted out of this.
Yes, there is a bit of luck, a lot of hard work, his exposure to a diverse set of people and his sheer talent that worked to make the genius of Raja. I have no doubt about that. But the formative years had a big influence because of the right learning technique and environment he was bestowed upon.
Avoid Boring People
Yes, you heard it right. It is pretentious, but it is correct, isn’t it?
Life is short. You want to spend the time with interesting people. You want to have exciting and memorable experiences. The easiest way is to shut off boring people.
But hold on. It is not just that.
This is one of the best life advice given by James Watson, Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a legend for his work unlocking the structure of DNA. It is the title of his biography as well.
This is an essential piece of advice on networking. To find interesting people, you should not be boring them. Yes, avoid being a bore. Be an interesting person. This is the core of the advice. Shutting off boring people is probably true in 10% of the time. But most of the time it is us, who needs to aware of this advice. We can bore the shit out of others by lamenting or berating. We can be very self-centred and nagging. By just being aware of this advice, we can be mindful of our behaviour.
This is also a lesson that I learnt from the writing bootcamp. When you try to connect with other people, we need to be really mindful of this fact. People are 10x busier than you. This simple heuristic makes you think in a different way of interacting with them. You are not just “catching up” for a coffee or just “hang out”. You have done enough research about the other person. Or you know in detail and very specifically the topic you want to talk and pick their brains out. Lastly, the other person gets a feeling that it is a time well spent with you.
The Best Book You Really Need to Read Next
I came across an interesting Tweet by Visakan today:
It’s interesting to me how many people consistently undervalue their own experience and their own feelings. Both are extremely valuable. The best book you could possibly read is IMO the book of your own life
This resonated so well with me. In fact, this is exactly what we all at 200WaD are doing. Like Basile Samile writing an online book, we are all writing a book about ourselves here. The book is very interesting because it has our observation, experiences and our own feelings.
Every day, we are all drafting a page or a chapter of our book. We are all indulging in the act of crystallizing our thoughts and taking a snapshot of it in a post.
Yes, it is hard. We run out of ideas or topics to write. Somedays we get interesting thoughts flowing but many days it is a struggle. But we are not alone. Everyone goes through this. Worse, there are people who have such thought but not even attempt to write it. They just lose a part of themselves by not doing this.
We all contain multitudes.
Six months ago, the Santhosh who was keen on keto and healthy eating is not the same Santhosh now. A lot of changes at home, I have fallen way off from that habit. Keto is just an example. On many things, I have changed my views, slightly or drastically.
If I was a version 2.0, I am now version 2.5. I am sure after a year or so, version 4.0 of me will be drastically different than 2.0. I might be cringing at my writing style (or lack of that) or my thoughts in the future. But that is a great thing, isn’t it?
Some wise guy said, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”.
What better way to track our progress than our writing?
Why Read the Classics?
I was cleaning up my reading list in Instapaper today. I saw an article that I had saved long back. It is highly recommended in my network interested in writing and literature. It is, “Why Read the Classics” by Italo Calvino. It is a short essay written twenty years ago. It is refreshing to read today. This essay is the best example I have recently come across with the Lindy effect.
I have been jealous of people who have read and re-read the classic books. I have had my trouble getting inspired by them and continue to finish it. But I listened to two 6-hour lectures by Dr Elizabeth Vandiver on Odyssey and Iliad. I found these guiding lectures to original texts very engaging and useful. But I still have not ventured into the reading of the original text. In this essay, Calvino has written some beautiful lines about what is classics and why to read them.
When defining a classic book, he says:
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
This is such a beautiful framing. It doesn’t prescribe the time it was written or by any specific writers. It is a book that speaks something to you and does that continuously.
A classic does not necessarily teach us anything we did not know before. In a classic we sometimes discover something we have always known …. And this, is a surprise that gives a lot of pleasure, such as we always gain from the discovery of an origin, a relationship, an affinity.
This line resonated with me, because a good book doesn’t do any earth-shattering act from outside. A good book discovers, excavates or shines a light on the things that are hidden in ours. That discovery is a joy, and it gives a high.
To read a great book for the first time in one’s maturity is an extraordinary pleasure, different from the pleasure of having read it in one’s youth. Youth brings to reading, as to any other experience, a particular flavor and a particular sense of importance, whereas in maturity one appreciates many more details and levels and meanings.
Like a bottle of old wine, age and maturity bring different lenses to view the same text.
Finally, like everyone I too have this question of when to read the contemporary, non-fiction, self-help, magazines or long-form essays and when to read classics. How to balance the reading diet? Calvino again has an answer for this:
the ideal thing would be to hearken to current events as we do to the din outside the window that informs us about traffic jams and sudden changes in the weather, while we listen to the voice of the classics sounding clear and articulate inside the room…A classic is something that tends to relegate the concerns of the moment to the status of background noise, but at the same time this background noise is something we cannot do without.
It is a very short essay and I assure you that reading it is time spent very well.
How to Read 10 Times More Without Any Speed Reading Hacks?
I love reading, and it is one of my favourite activities. This is a collection of mental frameworks/tips/techniques to improve my reading skills.
Let me start with the fundamental rule. I call it the Jorge Luis Borges rule.
Jorge Luis Borges Says:
“If a book bores you, leave it; don’t read it because it is famous; don’t read it because it is modern; don’t read it because it is old. If a book is tedious to you, leave it… Reading should be a form of happiness…continue to look for personal happiness and personal enjoyment. It is the only way to read.”
I have made the mistake of slogging through books that were painful, just because it was on a must-read list before I die or something. Don’t ever do that.
Tyler Cowen - How to Read Fast
Tyler Cowen is a polymath. His vast interests and high production function are a huge inspiration. His tip for reading fast doesn’t include things like speed-reading, instead:
“The best way to read quickly is to read lots. And lots. And to have started a long time ago. Then maybe you know what is coming in the current book. Reading quickly is often, in a margin-relevant way, close to not reading much at all.” ….
“I start ten or so books for every one I finish. I don’t mind disliking a book, and I never regret having picked it up and started it. I am ruthless in my discards.”
See how it relates to Jorge’s rule. This is an extremely important tip I have picked up from very good readers. They are not intimidated by the sunk-cost fallacy with books. They discard the books that are not interesting at that point in time.
Robin Hanson’s - Chase Your Reading
This short blog is a gem in rethinking my approach to reading. Here are some highlights:
Hunting has two main modes: searching and chasing. With searching, you look for something to chase. With chasing, in contrast, you have a focus of attention that drives your actions. You may find something else worth chasing along the way, and then switch your focus to a new chase, but you’ll still maintain a focus.
In the searching mode, readers tend to be less critical. If a source came recommended, they tend to keep reading along even if they aren’t quite sure what the point is. Since authors tend to be more prestigious than readers, readers tend to feel reluctant to question or judge what they’ve read. They are more likely to talk about whether they enjoyed the read than whether the author’s argument works.
In chasing mode, you continually ask yourself whether what you are reading is relevant for your quest, or whether the author actually has anything new or interesting to say. You flip around seeking sections that might be more relevant, and you might even look up the references for an especially relevant section.
Searching mode is passive reading where we are exploring the territory, getting to know and immersing ourselves into the environs. Chasing mode is active reading where we poke holes in the author’s logic and arguments and see how it can be broken. I think there are no judgements on which one is better. It depends on the context, what we are learning or what mood we are actually in.
There is a nice quote in the blog from Samuel Johnson, which nails this:
What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
Tiago Forte’s - Progressive Summarization :
Tiago is a productivity expert, obsessed with improving learning and retention of knowledge. His technique is quite unique. It is a highlight-heavy approach to reading. When you read an essay and if you come across an interesting line, you just highlight it.
The challenge of knowledge is not acquiring it. In our digital world, you can acquire almost any knowledge at almost any time. The challenge is knowing which knowledge is worth acquiring. And then building a system to forward bits of it through time, to the future situation or problem or challenge where it is most applicable, and most needed.
We now have the technology to capture our learning. We now can take snapshots of our learning in the form of highlights and notes. It is completely foolish to rely only on our memories. We should augment our memory with these technologies to learn and unlearn things faster.
Kevin Simler - Life Hacks on Reading
- Have a Kindle, it reduces the friction in trying out samples of the books.
- Have an Audible subscription and listen to books during the commute, laundry or other mundane tasks.
- If time, (not money), is a constraint, buy the Audio+Kindle of the same book. Listening+reading isn’t faster than reading by itself, but it’s more immersive and makes it easier to read.
- Set your current book as your phone’s lock screen, as a reminder of how you’d rather spend your time. (Personally, this has been a superb quick win for me. I unlock/lock the phone at least 35 times a day. The photo of the book on the lock screen is a very subtle reminder to read that book. Highly recommended life hack.)
My Tool Stack for Reading and Retention
The science behind learning says that if we don’t frequently refresh on what we read, we are mostly like to forget it. Let us say, you are reading an excellent essay in New Yorker, you come across a nicely written line or paragraph. You want to remember it for a long time. You can either select and store it in Evernote or Gmail. But when will you read it? I don’t think we can add a reminder to go through such items in our inbox or Evernote.
Here are some tools that can give you the superpower of learning things and remembering it forever:
ReadWise - This is an essential tool in my reading tools stack. You can sync all the notes into this tool. ReadWise will send a mail to you every day with up to 10 randomly chosen highlights. This seemingly trivial mail is so powerful. It takes less an 2 minutes to read the daily e-mail. But by just skimming this content, your brain gets refreshed by content you marked as relevant. If that topic is in your conscious mind, it is going to help you at the right moment.
Highly - This is a little browser plugin (also has a mobile app extension) that helps you to highlight any content that you see on the web. A nice tweet or a good comment or important concept you are reading Wikipedia. Everything can be highlighted with Highly. All highlights get synced with ReadWise ☺️. Any interesting content you read online will be part of the daily mail from ReadWise.Instapaper - This is a read-it-later app that I highly recommend. It will avoid you to have gazillion browser windows open across devices. It downloads the content in your mobile, so you can read it in a focussed manner, whenever you are ready. More importantly, as you read, you can highlight the interesting texts. Again the highlights are synced with ReadWise. (I have used Pocket earlier, but I don’t see it having the highlighting feature, which is crucial for me.)ReadWise Reader - This is my favourite read-it-later app with features to highlight any webpages, read RSS feeds, receive all my newsletters. Reader is a kickass super-app for reading. I have replaced Instapaper, Highly and Stoopinbox with Reader.
Kindle - Whether you use the Kindle device or the app in your smartphone, by default, it supports highlighting. All the notes/highlights of Kindle will also be automatically synced with ReadWise.
As you see from above, almost all my reading sources are directed to ReadWise. By this, I don’t miss out any important content that I have read. Even, if I tend to forget, the daily mail from them refreshes my memory. Since I sync the content from various sources that are interesting, I look forward to reading the daily mail from ReadWise.