I see, learn and rediscover… everyday!
 
Terms I learned this year

Terms I learned this year

Yak Shaving

Yak shaving refers to a task, that leads you to perform another related task and so on, and so on — all distracting you from your original goal. This is sometimes called “going down the rabbit hole.”

Seth Godin has an interesting post about yak shaving – https://seths.blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that/ and even AMEX has an interesting post about the same – https://americanexpress.io/yak-shaving/.

Schlep blindness

The phenomenon that too many founders focus on easy and obvious ideas instead of solving the tedious and unpleasant (=schlep) underlying problems. The tricky part about Schleps is that we tend to avoid them automatically. According to Graham, there’s a bias towards choosing the easy way out of a problem. That is Schlep Blindness.

Learned this from Paul Graham’s blog – http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html.

Sprezzatura

Learned this from an internal email thread. It means ‘a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it‘.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura

For example, we’ve all enjoyed the product launches from Steve Jobs. The launch of the iPhone, iPad were legendary. But there is an enormous amount of preparation that goes behind those presentations, well-timed jokes, and slides. He would rehearse on stage for many hours over many weeks prior to the launch of a major product. He knew every detail of every demo and every font on every slide. As a result, the presentation was delivered flawlessly. People often tell me, “I’m not as smooth as Jobs was.” Well, neither was he! Hours and hours of practice made Jobs look polished, casual, and effortless. – from https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/10/04/11-presentation-lessons-you-can-still-learn-from-steve-jobs/?sh=21371fdedde3

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