Learn from Benjamin Franklin, One of the Founding Fathers of United States of America

Journaling is one of the best ways to get your work done. A journal helps you keep track of time as well as how you choose to spend it. Most people write diary to express their thoughts, but writing one to track your day and time will be more productive in the long run.

A journal not only helps in recording your daily life, but it also helps in organising and planning your day. There are two ways of going about a journal; either recording your daily life or your thoughts about it, or by writing about the things you plan to do every day – the time you wake up, your commute, work, etc. There is no need to get in the philosophical and pondering mode for the day. Initially, this task might be boring, but eventually you will get the hang of it.

Benjamin Franklin had his diary divided into two parts. On the left side of the page, he used to write about one good deed he did during the day and in the evening he used to ponder on the same question once again. The center part of the diary is divided into a planner that lists all the waking hours. On the right side people can write what they did throughout the day at each hour. One of the great things is that he used to document even the hours he spent in leisure.

This would also help him reflect on the hours he wasted on contemplating and doing nothing. In order to be more productive, monitoring is important. What can be a better tool than noting down what you do! You can either use online note taking tools or go the old school way by writing things down. Now that you know how to go about it, pick up a notebook and start journaling today to be more productive.

(taken from http://yourstory.com/2016/03/benjamin-franklin-productivity-hacks)

Failure is the Best Teacher

To learn, it is important you fail a few times. Every failure is because of some mistake one makes. Learning from mistakes is a trait of a successful entrepreneur.

Tip to Succeed from the Great Rocky Balboa

“Nobody is going to hit as hard as life, but it ain’t how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. It’s how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” 

What Sundar Pichai Did Right?

I read this article written by a PM working at Google about what separated Sundar from his peers. 

"Besides being incredibly talented and hardworking like many of his coworkers and peers, Sundar did a few things:

Foremost, he led successful efforts for difficult projects that were core to Google's continued financial success, namely Toolbar and Chrome. Toolbar wasn't an obviously sexy product but it helped defend the presence of Google search on users' computers during a critical period following the revelation of Google's incredible profitability. Chrome extended that mission to improve the user experience of the entire web: keep users on the web and you'll keep them searching on Google.

He recruited, mentored, and retained a great team. Sundar's team of product managers had a reputation as being among the best of the best, similar to the reputation of the software engineers within Search Quality.

He avoided making enemies. Google has politics like any other large company, and Sundar navigated those politics to make his team successful while inflicting the least possible damage on any other team."

It's amazing to see how a little known soft-spoken manager becomes the second most important person at Google (the first being the co-founder Larry Page) and one of the most important CEOs in the world.  

The Demise of Kodak

Kodak was an old company (founded in 1888!) and everyone in America and their grandparents knew that Kodak was synonymous with taking pictures. They used their powerful brand penetration and goodwill to thrive in adjacent markets, like VHS tapes. They even created Figment, their own Disney character, for Epcot.

Then digital cameras became affordable. Film sales dropped in 2001. Kodak unwisely attributed this to the September 11 attacks. By 2005, the increasingly obvious death of film had forced them to beef up their digital units, and they ranked first in US digital camera sales. In theory, Kodak had figured out the digital camera market.

But unlike intricate film cameras, which can only be manufactured by companies with large amounts of capital and require years of R&D to perfect, digital cameras were easy and cheap to produce.

In two years, increased competition made Kodak number four in the US. That same year the iPhone was introduced.

By 2010, they ranked seventh place, with traditional cameras losing market share to smart phones.

Kodak struggled to turn a profit. They tried making inkjet printers, laid off thousands of workers, and used patent litigation as a source of revenue. Before they filed for bankruptcy in 2012, Kodak was so desperate for cash that they considered auctioning off their decades worth of patents.

(story taken from www.devicemagic.com)

Lessons Learnt from the Kodak Story:

- Always watch for the next big thing and be flexible to make changes. Being late movers and rigid leads to your company falling behind competition. As they say, ‘Adapt or Perish’.

- Always stick to your core offering. Kodak tried to reinvent itself when they felt they were lagging behind. Had to stuck to simple and easy to use cameras, they would not have fared the way they did.

Are layoffs in big startups a matter of concern for budding entrepreneurs?

Concern – No, Learning – Yes. We need to understand the reasons for the layoffs first. The startup scene in India started booming last year and this led to a lot of startups forming overambitious targets and efforts to scale their businesses. Without analysis their startups at a micro level, startups started marketing heavily and hiring aggressively to sustain the growth. This led to a big boom in startup hiring and somewhat created a small bubble in the process.

When investors started questioning the sustainability of the growth being seen in startups and money became more difficult to come by, startups had to assess their growth and business model. To become more sustainable and lean, they had to resort to mass layoffs to cut the extra fat they had developed in the recent period.

Hence, the startup ecosystem in India is here to stay and we will see rapid growth in the years to come. Startups should understand that growth should always be well paced and sustainable and analysis should dominate emotion in driving a venture.