MWB #23 - How to interpret mistakes, Career choices and Pseudonymous economy
...the way the world works is different from how we want it to work. However, we can find a balance between both worlds.
Hello there,
When you make mistakes, how do you interpret them? Do you see it as a time to stop or time to update your knowledge? I went back to take my favourite course on Coursera, “Learning How To Learn”. And in the week 2 syllabus, Barbara Oakley taught about the Illusion of Competency. There she said this: “mistakes help correct your thinking so that you can learn better and do better”.
I found that when I view mistakes this way, I can learn better. I learnt that the mistakes that I make while learning are merely a signal to correct my thinking and update my knowledge. You should also start seeing the world that way.
What’s in here for you today?:
Tweet of the week
Best of what I wrote
Best of what I read
Balaji’s musings: pseudonymous economy
Tweet Of The Week
Best of What I Wrote
Scalable vs Non-scalable Career: The way the world works is different from how we want it to work. We all desire a career where our output is not proportional to our input, asymmetric returns. A career where we see those building large businesses, earning money from “their passion” and see some who flaunt their wealth on social media with the caption “working from XX Island” and we desire it. What we often fail to realize is that only a few (outliers) get the outcome we see. Can you be an outlier?
In this new article, I explained the difference between a scalable career and the non-scalable one. Giving you enough knowledge to choose which one you want to go for and what it takes to be a success in either of both.
If you enjoy reading on scalable career, then you should also read Biased Towards Monopoly. In it, I wrote about what success means in a scalable career and how to achieve it. Spoiler alert, sustainable success is attained in the scalable career if you bring on your uniqueness instead of copying an existing successful model.
Best of What I Read
Patrick Stanley on the Future of Work: Patrick, CEO of Freehold, took the idea of a pseudonymous economy further. He wrote, “the future of work is on the precipice of a major evolution. We're about to unlock a new economy—and it's going to expand the world’s digital wealth by enabling people to work on things they believe in.”
Then he expanded on the idea of earning under a pseudonym and blockchain replacing the cap tables. These are ideas of the future and you must be very curious for you to enjoy reading them.
A lot of people want to get better at writing but doesn’t know-how. In this Twitter thread, Dickie shared 12 profound insights from the book “Business Writing” that help you improve your writing. You will be surprised at how simple they are and what great difference they can make to your writing.
Balaji’s Musings - Pseudonymous Economy
Have you been in a situation before where you couldn’t say your opinion or contribute to a thing just because doing so with your “real name” would have resulted in character assassination or affect your earnings?
This is an age-long problem. Many writers usually have to use a pen name or pseudonym to separate their ideas from their history. They do that so that their ideas can be judged based on merit and not because of their history (good or bad). However, the problem persists. Especially because at the point of earning income, they would have to reveal who they are. Since they can only earn through their verified bank account or in-person in cash and both scenarios would reveal who they are.
Only a Pseudonymous Economy can solve this problem as postulated by Balaji.
There are 3 layers to identity in a society; Real Name, Pseudo Name and Anonymous Name.
Pseudonymity is not anonymity. But Pseudonymous names makes room for accountability, can build a reputation and it provides a shield against character assassination.
Pseudonym is mainstream already. It's on Instagram, Twitter, Reddit and many more. On Reddit Pseudonym is the norm, and it's not so to do harm but to discuss without retaliation. We are our real self or a version of our real self under pseudonyms.
And if you think this is not a phenomenon to take seriously, just look at Patrick’s tweet below. There’s a difference between “I work with a team from different geographies” and “I work with a pseudo team”. For a Pseudo team, all you can do is judge them based on their work, their, history with you, and their revealed life. You don’t know if they are ex-convict or from Syria or Black or white. Just their Pseudo name and their work. That’s all you have to judge them on.
There are ramifications to this and I will be exploring more of it in the coming week. And yes, these people can earn with a Cryptocurrency that protects their privacy like ZCash.
So imagine that you start all over and notwithstanding your history, you could become anything you wish to become. That’s the promise of a pseudonymous economy and it’s worth thinking about.
Why Balaji’s musings? You may ask.
This tweet will best answer the question. And since our goal here is to learn to navigate the world masterfully, knowledge about the future state of the world is an advantage.
That’s all for this week,
See you next week.
You can comment below with your ideas or reply this email to share them.