So today, I take that pause, chisel at my feelings, console the inner child and move forward as I continue to mould a new being.

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As life progresses, one of the factors that gets increasingly present in our daily lives is ED (Emotional depth… I know, you laughed – maybe twice, depending on which headlines you’ve been reading). I do not know if Emotional Depth is a real term, yet it seems to describe a feeling I have.

As I started to write this post, I immediately remembered this tweet from @kshashi where he talks about what unleashes the wrath of toddlers. “Breaking roti in pieces when he wants it full” stuck with me. Maybe all of us remember a moment from our childhood when we cried over something that now seems either silly or common.

Last week, my 6 yo nephew in Bangalore cried and created a bit of a ruckus (only a bit, he is daring for the most part) when he saw his parents playing a game of Catan with some friends when he returned from his class. His demand was that they need to play two games of Catan with him on the same day! My bhabhi explained to him on the lines of… “seeing your family happy and having a good time should make you happy instead of thinking that you lost something…”

From broken roti pieces to playing a game of Catan, what becomes a crisis for us changes as we grow? I remember crying after coming back from school because my cousins who were visiting us for the past few days had left for the train station before I got back. Nobody told me they are leaving, and maybe for good reason

What I considered drama or as I often call it adventure during my teenage years versus what it looked like in my 20s and what it now looks like in my 30s is wildly different. During my teenage years it would probably be easy to upset me and make me lose sleep over something small and insignificant. In my 20s, the same things would probably upset me, but I would see added anxiety from running a startup with all my inexperience. And as one grows, the number of open threads, unresolved issues, situations where one is helpless, family drama… it all compounds. The number of people we know, the number of things we do and the number of responsibilities on our shoulders… all add up. Yet, I think this video that shows our reaction to problems across generations (70s kid vs 80s kid vs 90s kid…), seems to apply to me with all of these reactions being a part of me.

Just that the video plays in reverse now. My reactions to inevitable worldly issues aren’t as wild anymore. Maybe it’s just the numbness from seeing so many things hit at once that makes it easier. A higher pain tolerance? Or maybe it’s the calmness that comes with greater emotional depth.

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So should one attempt to play long-term games with short-term people? There are many transactions in life that are short-term. Often just one-time. Should one seek a long-term player on the other end for these transactions too?

Think of a used car salesman. Should one just see the car they are buying and make the trade based on due diligence? Or also assess if the salesman is trustworthy? I find it extremely difficult to do such transactions without establishing trust in the counterparty unless it is something as basic as buying a cheap earring from a roadside vendor.

Buying a car is a multi-week process. It probably ends with having the car registration and insurance done. At times it involves loan processing as well. With a bad operator, things can become sour at any of these stages. Things are much better in matters like a new car, but even that isn’t as straightforward either. If you are like me, you would fret over small things like the dealership adding annoying promotional stickers to your car. 

The problem of trust is much higher when renting an apartment. A troublesome landlord can affect your peace of mind perpetually. I happily pay a premium to get an apartment (or office) from a landlord whom I can work with without suffocating conversations. And no, WeWork does not solve this on the commercial side. But it sure does much better than alternatives for a small setup. Dealing with a brand that has to care about reputation does help.

I was speaking to a friend recently and he talked about how his partner let go an employee who was asking for a salary raise and created a bit of a ruckus about the same. The effective loss of business to the company was in the range of 2.5x – 5x the salary paid. We discussed how managing egos and making the compromise would have been profitable.

And when I see the above three scenarios, a car (used or not), an apartment rental, and a part-time employee, I seem to be aligned with Naval’s long-term games with long-term people in 2 of the 3 scenarios. In the case of the troublesome part-time employee, I seem to be favoring the business profitability more. And that’s the conflict brewing in my mind this morning.

Am I over optimising for peace of mind? Aren’t so many successful people around me making the difficult trades all the time? Am I thinking of making more such compromises at work but not in personal dealings? 

I am putting the conflict to rest for today thinking that if I were in the situation that my friend described, maybe I would have let go of the profits for peace of mind. In matters of heart and mind, the heart wins.

^ Why do I call it in matters of heart and mind? Isn’t trust a matter of mind as well? The reason is simple. Trust is often a feeling for me. A subtle one.

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I have had a desktop computer for most of my life. I think the earliest I got one was sometime in 90s. It was a privilege. And in over two decades of computing it is only in 2020 that I have learnt how useful large screens are. So much so that I believe it is a disservice to spend on a good laptop before buying a large external monitor (27″ or more!). I also think organisations need to promote use of large external and even multiple screens for professionals. It is a must have for productivity.

Using an external screen is increasingly common for coders. But the benefits are far from limited to just software engineers. During my international visits, I found it lavish to see even admins & operations staff at co-working space using external displays with their laptops.

It should have hit me back then that a good external monitor has a life of 10 years and costs less than 1 months salary of most working individuals (even in India). Yet we see folks toiling away on small laptop screens and embarrassingly in cases like mine with fancy MacBooks.

2020 was a year I decided to give it a shot, largely motivated by the extensive amount of video editing I did during the COVID-19 lockdown. And while I haven’t edited any videos in the last few months, I cannot see myself working without a large external monitor ever again. Make no mistake, I do no such thing as coding or juggle heavy Excel sheets on a daily basis. Yet the benefits of an external monitor are now immediately visible to me.

We are in an age of information overload, multiple email ids, Slack, WhatsApp, Zoom, Hangouts, Discord, Telegram, all vying for our time.

We are in an age of information overload, multiple email ids, Slack, WhatsApp, Zoom, Hangouts, Discord, Telegram, all vying for our time. With a large screen it is much more easy to organize these apps, read longer articles, play a YouTube video on the side while you sort your emails or have two apps open side by side for cross referencing. For specific professions like accounting, video editing, content writing or online teaching there are immediate benefits of a 2nd display or a single large screen.

If you think this is a luxury and not a must have, here is a story from recent memory. A colleague who worked part-time with us over the last year recently moved on from our company. He now conducts MS Excel coaching sessions online via Zoom / Google Meet for various batch of students. As a part of his work from home kit, he had a decade old 19″ desktop monitor that he got from us. During his exit, I noted that he hadn’t returned the monitor.

Upon inquiring, he mentioned that it was difficult to carry it and he would return it on a later date. Incidentally a few weeks later I had a side project that could benefit from a monitor and I called our Excel guru colleague to check if he can drop it over at office. I could sense some hesitation in his tone and upon probing further he revealed that he finds it much more comfortable to conduct his Excel classes with the external screen where he can see his students.

This colleague of mine is an extremely simple and humble person who probably uses a 5 year old laptop that (in my assessment) desperately needs an upgrade. Under normal circumstances he would never invest in an 2nd screen just for online teaching. But after a few months of using it, he offered to pay for keeping the used monitor.

How to choose your external monitor? I bought mine after reading a fantastic article on the subject by Techoids. Do give it a read and remember two basic things. 27″ is the bare minimum and 32″ isn’t as big as you think

PS: My good old 19″ screen was left with the colleague as a gift.

The post Underestimating Technology – My Tryst With Monitors appeared first on Annkur.

I am committing to a weekly newsletter, which in itself is a challenge to talk to you often. To make it easy, I am going to be sharing interesting stuff that I came across (stories, articles, photos, blogs, podcast, news, analysis, life gyaan, gadgets etc), so you don’t really have to read a boring personal letter every week. I would do my best to keep it crisp.

The newsletter is called ‘Letters from Annkur’. It has its own page: https://annkur.com/letters – which you can use if you want to share with someone. I am also putting up the subscribe form below in case you can’t wait for another click

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Going bald can be a fashion and is often tied to ones identity, but it comes with extreme fear and anxiety. The 45-min quest of trying to style my hair at home (with Prerna’s help) got frustrating and I said, let’s just get rid of these. After all they will grow back sooner or later. Also what better time than this to dare

The first shave with the trimmer was full of jitters, but after that there was no going back. And when you do something like this, it is hard to forget an important lesson – don’t just acknowledge the elephant in the room, sit over it. So I went ahead and shared my new look on Instagram and voila, the response was great.

People love it, friends loved and even folks whom I haven’t spoken to in a while loved it. It also inspired at least 2 family members to follow suit. I guess some more folks got a nudge.

If and when I lose my hair permanently, I now have the comfort that I can pull it off. Knowing this is liberating.

Presenting the Annkur bald look

PS @dktejwani took my photo and shared a beautiful graphic a few days later. If anything was left to sit on the elephant, this completed it

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All of you—people who follow me on Facebook—are not average people. By the fact that you’re drawn to my posts, you automatically have self-selected. Using the Facebook API and some text processing, I did some analysis, and here are the key characteristics that I believe would describe you:

• You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.
• You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.
• You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.
• While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them.
• Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.
• At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
• You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
• You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.
• You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
• At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.
• Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
• Security is one of your major goals in life.

How closely does this set of statements describe you?

—-

Answer that question before reading further

—-

So, that was a psychological trick. I did not do any analysis, and those statements don’t describe any of you.

The statements above are designed in such a way _everybody_ feels that the statements describe them uniquely. They’re called Forer statements or Barnum statements, and they’re are routinely used by psychics, astrologers, marketeers, psychometric/personality testing “professionals,” and other scamsters into making people feel that they are special, and are being treated specially.

Of course you are unique and special. But not like this.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia page for the Forer Effect/Barnum Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect

The post Barnum Effect appeared first on Annkur.

The shift response

Karen: I need new shoes.

Mark: Me, too. These things are falling apart.

The support response

Karen: I need new shoes.

Mark: Oh yeah? What kind are you thinking about?

Shift responses are a hallmark of conversational narcissism — they help you turn the focus constantly back to yourself. But a support response encourages the other person to continue their story. It lets them know you’re listening and interested in hearing more.

Read: Why we should all stop saying “I know exactly how you feel” Second, the Facebook post which got me thinking about this topic again. Sorta documenting on my blog so that I can come back to this and keep this concept alive.

Hat tip: Aarohi

Ps: I wanted to link to the Facebook post. But damn Facebook’s growth hacking. I can’t get the link from their messenger mobile app (I wrote this post on mobile).

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I have used my iPhone 6s with the Battery Case ever since I first got it in April last year. For me, undoubtedly it has been the most productive mobile accessory every purchased. The case feels good to hold, provides protection to my phone and most importantly close to doubles the battery life on my iPhone. This means, on most days, I am home with anywhere from 40-60% charge still left on my device. Even on days when I am traveling with heavy GPS and LTE usage, I do manage to survive with 10-15% at the end of the day.

This has had an amazing impact on my mobile usage. I am more confident about using Google Maps or stream Neflix / YouTube on mobile. Plus I no longer have to consciously charge my phone in office before I leave for any evening commitments. Else I risk being out of power and scrambling for a lightning charger, which is still very uncommon to find with any restaurant staff in India. (Side note: I would actually switch to Android if I can only trust my data / privacy there).

And I of course have zero hesitation in using my phone as a hotspot (and sharing it). Which means the need to carry a separate phone as data SIM or data dongle now evaporates. There is also a unique thing about having a battery case, you don’t have to charge both of these separately. Its been my second biggest issue with power banks, I just forget to charge them. That’s if I remember to carry them at all, which is my first issue. Bonus: You don’t end up sharing your battery case with others unlike power banks. So you don’t lose them at least that way.

In fact, I realised that most of the times, I couldn’t charge my mobile at work was because I had to use it! And then repented during an evening outing. But that changes with a battery case. It is much more convenient to just take off the battery case and let it charge and then put it back on when leaving from work. This is useful in situations where I end up at work after missing to charge my devices overnight.

I still wish that Apple someday makes a palm sized iPhone which is a little thick but has a huge battery. Probably never going to happen But till then, I would always be looking at a good Battery Case alongside my new iPhone purchase.

Btw: RIP Apple Battery Case?

Chances are that you are unfamiliar with the Apple Battery Case. After all it wasn’t the most famous or cheered Apple accessory. In fact, it was criticised and ridiculed for its design by many. And I suspect most of them did not use it enough before writing it off. However, the reviews were good. Unfortunately, it does seem that Apple has discontinued manufacturing the Battery Case and you won’t find them for the iPhone 8 and X series.

This decision by Apple may either be due to optics (making the case is sort of agreeing that iPhone battery life is poor) or simply a belief that iPhone battery life has increased, specially with the bigger sized models. Either way, having used the official Battery Case for almost a year now, I am unlikely to have a comfortable upgrade to an iPhone 8, X or XI without figuring the battery case replacement. It is just that addictive to have all day battery life without any anxiety or cables dangling off your pocket during a conference.

The post Killing The Battery Anxiety appeared first on Annkur.

However, good design isn’t a factor of learning jargons or spending money on expensive consultants. I have seen some hyper funded products with poor experience and some very well executed apps by a single person effort. For this reason, it becomes important for founders to educate themselves a bit about what makes their product more usable. Today, I want to talk about one of the most common fallacies of UX – Trying to make things faster by eliminating steps.

Don’t we hate apps that introduce a LOT of clicks during checkout? It may be for various reasons like confirming order details (qty, price etc), address and payment mode. In some cases there are steps induced for up-selling (Hey Godaddy!). And given that all of us have suffered terrible UX, we strive to make our own apps / products easier to use. Often by reducing steps.

It occurred to me some time back when making Pricebaba that everything that we want our users to experience cannot be fitted on a single screen easily and we would need to live with the fact that there are certain users who would engage and some who won’t. Let’s not ignore the experience of consumers who do engage with us!

Here is an example of how the fallacy of reducing steps affects real users. Till date I have twice booked movie tickets for a wrong date. And the third time the same thing was going to happen, I was convinced that it isn’t just my way of using Bookmyshow, but a design flaw. Bookmyshow always assumes that you are booking tickets for the current date or the first day of movie release in case you are booking before release.

I am also provided with this statistics that 83% of their users book tickets for the same day. This has prompted Bookmyshow to make the remaining 17% users vulnerable to book the wrong date. And clearly I am not alone.

Our data shows 83% of the booking on the same day and 56% of booking 1-2hr before the show.

— kiran (@kiran6390) May 15, 2017

No design is full / fool proof. But if so many power users have fallen for this, there must be a cause right? In my view DATE is a very crucial part of any ticketing and should not be assumed. No matter how effective you want to make the experience for majority of your users.

Will Bookmyshow users who want to see a movie, NOT book a ticket with BMS if they are prompted to select the date? Or are we okay with 17% of users being at a risk of losing their entire booking amount (given tickets are non refundable / changeable)?

In fact the fierce race to make the experience fast for 83% of user, BMS team ends up forcing the date even after the user has selected another date. See video below:

So next time you are designing an aspect of your product, do consider that going too fast can be error prone and also unnerving / uncomfortable for some users. If the core value proposition of your product or service is good, users will complete the flow.

Can you think of more such design fallacies? Ping me or comment below.

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