A Beginner's Mind

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education - Mark Twain As a lifetime believer in the value of education (not schooling) its hard for me to understand why some of us don't read. I am reading for as long as I can remember. And as far as I know, when I started reading no one in my family was doing it. I just slipped into it. Maybe it was because I wasn't interested in anything else - such as sports. But whatever the reason, in today's world reading can no longer be thought of as a hobby or a chore but as an essential part of life.  Its almost every week I meet someone who complains that he wants to read and has tried several times but never caught on to it. Some say its because of time constraint (I know it must be very difficult for guys with kids and families), others say its due to the lack of energy and some even say its because they feel sleepy as soon as they open a book (my answer to them is "you are very lucky, some people ha...

This post was first published on LinkedIn Pulse : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rosser-reeves-principle-contrast-marketing-devesh-tiwari Do you know who is Rosser Reeves? Rosser Reeves was an advertising executive from the fifties who has 3 important contributions to the world of Marketing: He coined the term “Unique Selling Proposition”, the idea that any product or service in the marketplace has to specify what differentiates it from its competitors. He was the first to create ads for presidential campaigns. Including a 1952 ad for Dwight D. Eisenhower. The ad was called “ I like Ike”. You can check it out  here He is the protagonist of the one of most famous stories in advertising, one that exemplifies enduring power of clarity. And also highlights the principle of contrast. This is how the story goes: One afternoon, Reeves & a colleague were having lunch in central park. On the way back to their Madison Avenue office, they encountered a man sitting in the ...

I have always been fascinated by pre-history. How did we get here? What would it be like to live 100,000 years ago? And most important of all questions - If humans originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago, how did we migrate to all corners of the world without any modern means of transport? By modern I mean - ships, planes or other mechanical/automotive contraptions - as most of these have been discovered within the last 500 years. A minuscule timescale compared to thousands of years when a small group of people would've started this journey. They would be the first ones to leave their home in pursuit of the unknown for the first time in the history of man. The first explorers amongst the first people. In my amateur search I came across several interesting articles esp. this one on early human migration on Wikipedia . The article has an interesting migration map that shows how we started from Africa and then spread across the continents. Understandably there is no archa...

I recently read  this post  by one of my favorite modern essayists – Paul Graham. In this post he talks about how someone choses his vocation. The answer Paul claims is whatever doesn’t seem like work to you is most likely what you should be doing, even if others don’t understand or appreciate it. This got me thinking about Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours rule. For those of you who don’t know about the rule – in his book  Outliers,  Gladwell claims that you need to practice a skill for at least 10,000 hours before you can become an expert in it. He proves this hypothesis by giving examples such as Bill Gates, The Beatles and many more – who have demonstrated genius in their respective fields. When I overlay both ideas, I conclude that in order for someone to become an expert at something he must be genuinely interested in it. Sounds clichéd right. Think a bit deeper. What would drive this interest? Curiosity? And what drives curiosity? Is it imagination, knowle...

Understand your audience – Who are you talking to you? Why should the person listen to you? How would your conversation be if you were talking to that person face 2 face? Dig deep into the subject matter (at least 3 whys deep) to understand what is being communicated and why. Avoid superlatives Maintain a casual tone Avoid redundant & clichéd statement such as Today, it is always, it’s been known, we all know etc.