Abhinav’s Channel

I’ve been constantly questioned by my friends about my priorities related to my work and as universally known, everyone is free to have their own opinion. So here’s mine.

The Mindset — The ownership mindset is my default setting. This is something we look into every person we hire, and expect everyone in our team to own whatever they are working on.

But why, right? Why should one work with an ownership mindset?

Ownership Mindset activates people to put in more than their attention and time. It helps people put in their 120%. It lets people align every cell of their body towards what they are working on. People walk the extra mile, sit through solving a particular problem a little longer, and dig a little bit deeper than they usually would.

Let’s go one more level. Why should people put in 120% when it is “okay” to put 80%? Why should YOU even care about going the extra mile?

Human mind is ambitious by nature. We just put up a glass ceiling to our ambitions based on how we are exposed to possibilities and how we perceive it. YOU are ambitious, you know it. If you’ve ever heard, read or watched a success story and felt that you wanted the same, you are ambitious. But the funny thing about success stories is that nobody talks about the “120%” that one puts in consistently over the years to even become a success story. And that’s putting in 120% every SINGLE day towards what you are trying to achieve. You want to be successful? This is the ONLY way.

Now, that seems like a lot of work, right? Is it even worth it?

It is worth everything. And no it’s actually not a lot of work. Because of the Power of compounding. Compounding works on not just money. It works on relationships, success, skills, etc. Put that 120% everyday instead of putting in 200% one day and then resting.
Somebody has beautifully put that mathematically, I’m just gonna repost it.
0.99^(365days) = 0.03
1.01^(365days) = 37.78

Now the last question to stitch it all together — What has priorities got to do with all this? You can always put your 120% when you are working and not talk or think about it rest of the time?

Well, surprise! There’s no on/off switch in real life. It’s an extremely extremely difficult skill to master —to be able to stop thinking about it instantly at a particular time and do something else. If you are able to do it profoundly, that’s amazing but ask yourself this - “Is it because I can turn off the thoughts immediately or is it because I haven’t given my 120% yet?”

Thanks for reading through, this is just a train of thoughts that I decided to pen down. I hope you liked it.
Until next time :)

P.S. I’ve committed to write weekly at a habit group, so expect more posts on the channel. I am open to pick up some topic, do research and write about it. If you have something in mind, DM me! My favourite topics — Culture, Fintech, Growth, Startups, Leadership and Sports!

​​Hi everyone,
I know it’s been more than 3 months since there has been a life update and that is because I’ve been learning for the past two months!

Back in January I again entered a spiral of thoughts questioning what I was doing in life. Why isn’t there 10x growth or 10x learning! I generally get this emotion when I have a lot of time to think, I feel everyone goes through that spiral. (I got covid positive in the 3rd wave hence the time to think)

Anyway, with all those fusses in my head, I started exploring learning powerhouses / cohort-based courses and shortlisted GrowthX amongst 5 other promising ed-tech platforms because it stood out very very distinctly and had an insane vibe. I quickly got an interview with them and got shortlisted.

GrowthX’s experience was in two parts - 5 weeks of Classes on Growth and then a 4-week Capstone Project. In the capstone project, we were given a product (Koo India) and we were expected to model a growth plan. It was one of the most complex problem statements amongst other teams because
a) None of us has used this platform nor will we ever
b) Social media are one of the few insane platforms to scale in the B2C space (compare this with the likes of Netflix / Slice / Smallcase )
c) Build it for Bharat 🙂

We were thrown in a “perfectly curated” team of unknown 11 members team with an unknown product that one cannot possibly relate to, with one mission - Get 100m MAU in the next 12months. From the current 4m MAU. And do all this in the next 3 weeks.
We competed against 15 brilliant teams, and let me tell you that these are all industry experts in product and marketing, with some folks doing marketing for 20+ years as well. Anyway, we competed and came 2nd, missed by a margin.

I wrote a little something for my capstone team and the founders of GrowthX, I think it perfectly captures my emotions and reflections from the last few weeks, sharing the same below:

“””

Hi Koovengers, after yesterday’s result I wasn’t sporting enough to write or speak much, sorry about that. I really believed we could win this and honestly, it's not because I had confidence in myself, it’s because I had confidence in the team, all of you, all of us. Anyway, I wanted to share my experience with you all because being vulnerable in front of a wider audience is maybe something I might not be able to (Learning every day).

If you would have read, this is exactly what I wrote in the introductions as to why I want to join GrowthX
What brings me to GrowthX? (2nd Feb 2022)
- Wasn’t 100% sure if I enjoy the Product role, hoping this will help me delve into some aspect of the Product.
- Over the past two years of remote work, lost the will to execute (mostly daydreaming and taking things easily), hoping to get that kick/passion back to innovate and build
- Going through a phase where I need to seriously up-skill to ensure we sell our B2B product to more clients in entirely new geography.
- Since work-from-home I’ve become more introverted although my major work involves speaking to our clients, hoping to revert that. Looking forward to meet few of you!
Guess what, I checked all the above 4 boxes and added 10 new line items, just in the span of 8 weeks! Insane. I love doing Product now, we hustled like crazy, up-skilled and interacted with so many!!

First of all, UD, AP, Manish – you all are absolute geniuses. You have created a gem of a community that I would more than anything be deeply proud to be associated with. I’ve been over endorsing about Growthx to almost everybody I speak to or meet, and I do this so naturally that even I don’t realise why. I do know now, it’s because it feels like home ❤️, and it’s because the knowledge I obtain here gives me the confidence & energy to be able to do things in life and work that it is contagious! I could see a stark difference between who I was before and after GrowthX. Thank you, I won’t be done learning here anytime soon! And as Rahul mentioned earlier, I would love to give back to the community in anyway I could.

Q: Socially Outcasted?

A: I’ve been constantly pestered about the fact that social media is something i’m missing out on. I’ve always known the right reasons why I quit these platforms but I have always struggled to collate and express those thoughts earlier.

1. My time
It’s estimated that an average person generally spends about ~2.5 hours of their day on social media platforms. It’s insane! Instead I use that time to interact with people, speak to them on phone or physically and more so to read amazing books! :)

2. Evil Platforms
There’s just a lot of articles / movies / series around it. I’m just gonna say it. These platforms are absolute money making businesses. They hire attention engineers to help you stay on the platform by showing you relevant content constantly and indefinitely. On top of that, they profile you to an absolutely bare level like which drink you ordered at Starbucks and what you could potentially watch in the next 2 hours. Don’t believe me, but listen to people who you admire on the internet when they say that it is not okay to do so. Absolutely not. Privacy first, always.

3. Dopamine
I think everyone is pretty familiar with this. Your mind is constantly being trained to crave for receiving notifications constantly. You are quite literally waiting for it. This causes attention disorders (and equivalent jargons) and doesn’t let you be productive or function at an amazing pace, and trust me, it sucks to give 80% of what you are capable of.

Q: So where do I receive content from and where do I communicate with my close ones, right?

A: Well, Here! I am available on telegram. If you are reading this post, you’re part of the channel which is very closely knit. Mostly everyone who is close to me is in this channel or I speak to them over call.
For content, I rely on twitter (have consciously deleted the app, I just use the web version) to consume my field related content and daily gyaan. I sometimes find myself scrolling on twitter but I’m never overdoing it or getting pestered with notifications.

You should consider taking a social sabbatical (this is copied). And trust me, trust me, trust me, you will not loose out on anything, but there’s just everything to gain, plus compounding works!!

Love you all, stay safe and Peace!

Great! Thanks for the feedback everyone. Now you will be able to react to the posts in this channel!

Welcome everyone to my public channel. I’ll try to keep this as updated as possible with my major life events as I am not on any other social media. Hope this works out. :)

Thanks for joining 🙏🏽