Vinod Khosla- on success, perseverance, and belief systems

Stuff of legends, gyaan, and truth bombs

For today’s prompt from StoaHQ, we watched this video.

My key takeaways from the 1hr video

What do legends do?

• Split days into time-blocks, you might have read about what Elon Musk does already.

• Vinod Khosla too has a 15 min slot to the day. This is highly effectively, applicable, simplifies huge projects to micro-tasks, makes live simple.

Perseverance:

Things do workout, if you persist. This immediately made me recall the quote from “The alchemist”

When you believe in something, you make it happen. If your intent is in place, you will strive hard to achieve your goal.

Your thoughts, words, and actions will align to achieve that singular goal.

People don’t remember your failures

The singular point of hesitation for so many of us to start is that- we are afraid of failure.

Failure does not matter, success matters. But to succeed, you should be willing to fail! This fear of failure is so high that so many of us don’t even start. During these times there is another question that helps me in the decision making process

“what is the worst that can happen?” this has changed the way I approach a problem or take a step.

Belief systems and conviction

One similarity I have noticed in founders who are passionate about building, about VCs who invested, in coaches who train sports teams, in teachers, in successful content creators, film makers is this: Conviction

They have a belief system, and they trust in it. You can tell that, it shows. Every Apple launch, in presentation ceremonies, in graduation days, in those 20 sec ads that made you re-watch, that tik-tok video that went viral.

Having a belief system is true leadership. This will bring clarity in knowing what is right to do.

Working on the Edges

In the edges where things are uncertain, is where the interesting changes in business and society happens.

This is where innovation happens, learnings are 10x, everyday is humbling.

As a person who has taken whacky career decisions and never stuck to norms, hearing this from someone like Vinod Khosla was reaffirming.

It is 5% of the society that is going to make these innovations happen, but being even a tiny speck in this “edge” gives a high.

Brutal honesty vs hypocritical politeness

This is a tricky subject, and I believe reaching a point of brutal honesty like VK himself says “is an indulgence”, it is a luxury.

There is a huge moral compass at play here.

These points struck me most

• Brutal honesty helps receiver to work on the constructive criticism.

• Give people the best advice you had to give, tell them you maybe wrong, but you are not going to say something you don’t believe in.

• Honest feedback helps people introspect.

• Constructive criticism serves others better 

There is a huge *conditions apply to these points, is the receiver ready for constructive criticism? Are they willing to introspect and improve? Is it going to burn a bridge?

I am going to ramble a bit now

- investing or even working for start-ups is high-risk but the learning curve is higher, the edge it gives one is incomparable, but needs to stay humble throughout.

- Do you have a core belief system? how are you nurturing it? Do you make conscious efforts to focus on your belief system?

- How do you stay curious always? Children who had/have the opportunity to explore and were part of self-led curriculums perform better in live because of their natural tendency to do unconventional things. You can follow a tribe or be part of an edge, there is always a choice.

- Send emails which urges the receiver to respond, cold emails work, but your intent and alignment have to be on point here.

- Invest in making a positive impact, there are only 2% of people working on stuff to create an impact and influence an entire generation, be a part of it.