A summary of the How to Speak course by Patrick Winston.

Start​

1. Do not start a talk with a joke. Instead, start with empowerment promise.
   1. Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas, in that order.
   2. The quality of communication, speaking and writing, is largely determined by how much knowledge you have, how much you practive with that knowledge, and your inherent talent (very small).
2. Empowerment Promise - Tell what they are going to know at the end of your talk and some of those things will make a difference in your life.
   1. By the end of this lecture, you will be exposed to a lot of ideas, which will ensure you get the maximum opportunity to have your ideas valued and accepted by the people you speak with.
3. Cycle – reiterate your main idea multiple times during the talk for clarity.
   1. At any moment in a talk, atleast 20% people are zonned out. So reiterate
4. Create a distinct “Fence” around your idea so that it can be distinguished from someone else’s idea.
5. Content Timeline – enumerate talk content to allow listeners to follow on where are you in talk.
6. Ask a question - a question not too obvious, but not too hard. Wait 7 seconds for answer.

Place and Time​

1. Ideal lecture time is 11 am (not too early and not after lunch).
2. The place should be well lit. In big halls, make them turn on audience lights, instead of just stage lights.
3. The place should be atleast half full. It must be chosen according to the expected audience.

Tools​

Visual perception is the most effective way to interact with listeners.

For teaching, informing

1. Draw on blackboard / whiteboard instead of slides.
   1. Graphics - Blackboard has graphics quality. You can associate different ideas.
   2. Speed - The speed at which you write on the blackboard is approximately the speed at which people can absorb ideas.
   3. Target - your hands are busy writing or pointing on the board. ✅
2. Watch your hands! Don’t hold them behind your back or in pockets, it’s better to keep them straight and use for pointing at the board.
3. Props – use them in order to make your ideas visual.

For job talk, exposing, slides

1. Don’t put too many words on a slide. Slides should just reflect what you’re saying, not the other way around. Pictures attracts attention and people start to wait for your explanation – use that tip.
2. Make slide as easy as you can
   1. No title, distracting pictures, border or frames.
   2. Use 40-60 font size.
   3. Not too heavy, add air to your slides
3. Do not use laser pointer – you lose eye contact with the audience. Instead use arrows and highlighters in slide itself.

Informing​

Show to your listeners your stuff is cool and interesting. You have to be able to:

• show your vision of that problem
• show that you’ve done particular things (by steps)

All of that should be done real quick in no more than 5 min. Persuade your listeners you’re not a rookie.

Getting Famous​

If you want to your ideas be remembered you’ve got to have 5 S

• Symbols associate with your ideas (visual perception is the best way to attract attention)
• Slogan (describing your idea)
• Surprise (common fallacy that is no longer true, for instance, just after you’ve told about it)
• Salient Idea (not necessarily important but the one that sticks out)
• Story (how you did it, how it works…)

How to End​

• Don’t put collaborators at the end, do that at the beginning.
• Question’s the worst way to end a talk.
• It’s good to end with a Contribution slide – to sum up everything you’ve told with your OWN decision.
• Don't "Thank you (for listening)". You can end with a quote of a prominent person (my own knowledge), with a salute to people.
  • How much you valued the time being here.
  • I’d like to get back, it was fun!
  • Hardest one, since saying “Thanks” is a kind of a habit and it’s really difficult to make people clap if your talk wasn’t fascinating, so you’d better do this great and you won’t have to worry about how to end!

1. Standing Up to Power Someone in power is asking you to do something unethical.

   • Do they have the right to ask this of me?
   • Are there others who agree with me?

2. Made a Promise and World Has Changed. You made a promise, but unexpected events have made it very hard to keep.

   • Can I still keep my promise, even if costly to me?
   • Does keeping this promise now make it harder to keep other promises?

3. Intervention. You see something that's wrong but face risks if you try to stop it.

   • Are you the right person to intervene or should you recruit help?
   • How can you create the least harm to everyone involved?

4. Conflict of Interests. Your personal interests and your work obligations are at cross purposes.

   • Who has a right to know the details and have I let them know?
   • Would my actions cause others to question my motives or character?
   • Are there any rules you should be following?

5. Suspicions Without Enough Evidence. You believe something wrong is going on, but you’re not sure.

   • What happens if I act on the allegations and they are false?
   • Who is accountable for solving the problem?

6. Playing Dirty. You could achieve justice by doing something that is normally considered unethical.

   • Would your action really bring about justice or the greatest good?
   • Does harming the other party help anyone besides yourself?

7. Skirting the Rules. To accomplish a worthy purpose, you have to go around the rules or break the law.

   • Would those with authority over the rules/law want you to break them in this case?
   • What are all the reasons the rule or law matters?

8. Dissemblance. Misrepresenting or concealing the truth could create a better outcome.

   • Do I have the authority to reveal the truth?
   • What are the real reasons I want to misrepresent the truth?

9. Loyalty. You are not sure how much to sacrifice to honor a relationship.

   • Have they shown loyalty to me?
   • Would they want your loyalty if they knew all the costs?

10. Sacrificing Personal Values or Relationships. Living true to your beliefs might impose a burden on others.

    • What costs am I willing to bear for my beliefs or relationships?
    • What burden am I placing on others by imposing my beliefs or relationships?

11. Unfair Advantage. You have the upper hand, but not in a way that you're sure is fair.

    • What makes the advantage unfair?
    • If I were the other party, how would I consider a person making my choice?

12. Repair. You made a mistake, but can get away with not fixing it.

    • Who should bear the cost for the mistake?
    • Did you act unethically when you made the mistake?

13. Showing Mercy. Someone has come asking for mercy, but granting it comes at a cost.

    • Is mercy mine to give?
    • Who bears the cost of showing mercy?

Full video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hzVdV63scU&t=27s

Summary​

My Favorite Thoughts​

• Do not wait to master a skill before starting, you learn on the job.
• You have to be resilient to be great. There will always be challenges; you keep going and have a positive outlook.
• To be a great leader, you must have deep interest, curiosity, and empathy for other people's work. Try to contribute to all meetings you go to. You can't always do that, but you have to strive for it.
• Great athletes have the ability to forget. You let the past be past and keep moving.

Favorite Books​

• Innovator's Dilemma
• Positioning - The Battle for your mind
• Less is More

How did you become a successful CEO?​

To run a company, you need to understand two things

1. Understand the fundamentals of your industry. Have a deep understanding of your product and its fundamental value proposition and constantly strive to move the needle.
2. Once you have built this machine, you need to figure out how to operate this machine. This operation is sometimes called culture or execution.

• This work requires innovation. Every CEO has to invent this from scratch.

Nvidia org chart vs. others​

Nvidia org chart is horizontally spread where entry-level people are only ~4 layers away from the CEO. Its culture fosters innovation and maximizes collaboration, unlike the hierarchical charts in other companies. The hierarchical org is best suited for an army, where you need accountability for every decision. The horizontal org enables innovation and ideas to come from everywhere. And if an innovative idea demands change in the company's course, it can be done over a weekend.

Business vs. Social Impact​

You have to be a good business, which makes money, and gives you the ability to impact the world. For example, Nvidia could only support multiple social causes if this was generating enough cash.

Nvidia is a great business with great impact.

Short-term outlook of the tech industry.​

The tech industry is fantastic. You have an impact on so many other industries. Right now, the environment is challenging, but this will pass. It's a bad year, but you must be resilient.

What is next?​

Digital Biology has a huge potential. We can now represent the language of biology in computers, which means we can now engineer it.

Thoughts on Autonomous Car​

Nvidia approach is - an autonomous car is just one application of automation. We are looking to automate anything that moves. Nvidia builds and sells

• Hardware
• Software to run on hardware
• Robotic Stack
• Machine Learning Depending on your use case, you can choose which stack you want to buy and innovate on top of it.

Thoughts on ChatGBT​

It's a significant moment in the tech industry, like when Apple launched the iPhone. ChatGBT is going to be monumental. Already there are 500 startups built on top of ChatGBT. In recent times, this is the first technology that everybody is using, and everyone is delighted by it. Everybody is now a programmer. This opens up the computing industry to other industries.

Biggest mistake​

If you make a lot of mistakes, it's hard to pick one. I have made a lot of mistakes

• Strategy mistakes
• Execution mistakes
• Taken businesses I shouldn't have
• Walked away from businesses I shouldn't have.

Final thoughts​

We usually look at the cost of doing something but don't estimate the opportunity cost. Most of life is about what you could have done.

2023​

1. There will rarely be just one right way of analyzing a situation, and one right thing to do. It doesn't mean there are no wrong ways.
2. Putting Problems into Perspective: We often get bogged down worrying about problems. Almost everyone is worrying about something every day. During those times, I find it helpful to get a perspective on how big the problem is and how much energy I should devote to it.
   1. Big Problems
      1. Global crises, such as Covid 19, Recession.
      2. Someone's life is in danger or losing someone close to you.
      3. Significant financial crises.
      4. Response: Seek professional help and look for community support.
   2. Medium Problems
      1. Non-catastrophic financial setbacks or career hurdles.
      2. Response: Do not let them overshadow other aspects of your life.
   3. Small Problems
      1. Everyday annoyances like conflicts in relationships or losing material things
      2. Response: Practice gratitude and mindfulness, recognizing that these are minor issues in the grand scheme of things.

2022​

1. Do the best with what you have, whereever you are.
   • Do not worry about which car you drive. Focus on being a good driver.
2. We are concerned that we are not good enough, but the trick is to focus on getting better.
3. You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.
4. It ain't what you do, it is the way you do it.

I am someone who takes a lot of hand written notes and need to draw on a paper to understand and learn something. Thus, I was looking for a blogging platform where I can just take a picture and post.

Goal​

I should easily be able to publish RICH content that's accessible on both mobile and desktop.

Subgoals​

It should

1. support emoji's 👋, pictures, and tables.
2. render fast on both mobile and desktop.
3. be lightweight. No analytics, no comments, no distractions such as other posts, ads. Just content.
4. require low maintenance and be cheap - no monthly subscriptions.

Solutions Considered​

I considered other blogging solutions available in the market such as Medium and Gitlab pages.

1. Medium 😒​

Medium is quite popular blogging platform these days.

Pros​

1. Easy to sign-up and start writing.
2. Out-of-box solution looks good and comes with commenting, analytics.
3. Low cost.

Cons​

1. A lot of distractions such as other articles, become a paid member etc.
2. You are stuck with the style/layout offered out of box. You can't change the color of text or appearance.
3. Your content stays on medium. It is harder to migrate to other platform.

2. Github Pages 😑​

Github pages is free and using Jekyll themes you can have pretty good blog site up and running.

Pros​

1. Free to host.
2. No platform lock-in. Your content stays with you and can easily be migrated.

Cons​

1. Difficult to maintain. My old coding blog www.rkandhal.com is on github pages. I found it hard to maintain with Jekyll upgrades. It is based on Ruby on Rails and anytime I ran into issues with ruby-gems it used to take a long time to troubleshoot.

Final Solution 😃​

I ended up building my own site using NextJS, hosted on Github and deployed using Vercel.

Pros​

1. Since I made the app, I have full ability to customize layout, font, style.
2. Learning opportunity to build new components and use it as a playground.
3. Easy to maintain. It uses tech stack (React, NextJs, Node) that I am familiar with. Thus, very easy to maintain.
4. Free.

Cons​

1. Out of the box solution is bare minimum. It will take some time to have a professional look and feel.

How to approach designing a new product or feature from scratch based on lessons learnt from Decode and Conquer book and at my work.

It's a three step process.

1. Clarifying questions
2. Identifying customers
3. Iterating solutions

1. Clarifying questions to understand the scope​

2. Identifying customers​

3. Coming up with solutions​

The scope of this post is products that I use frequently and views from a consumer's perspective.

Objectives​

While assessing design of something I consider how effectively a product solves user needs and while doing so what makes it unique.

1. Innovative - a new method, or product
2. Aesthetics - people love beautiful products
3. Usable - little friction between what user trying to do and what product is offering
4. Attention to Detail - this brings aha moment to users
5. Understandable - small learning curve

1. Tesla Cars​

Goods​

Improvement Opportunities​

2. Airpods Pro​

Goods​

Improvement Opportunities​

3. Google Nest Mini Speaker​

Goods​

Improvement Opportunities​

4. Roborock Robot Vacuum Cleaner​

Goods​

Improvement Opportunities​

I am Rohit, a full-stack software developer who loves to solve day-2-day problems using technology. Currently working majorly on JavaScript developments.

Dream Job​

My dream job with how I want to spend my 9hrs:

1. [50%] Product - A product which I genuinely care about. I love building beautiful and usable products, specifically using geometry with JavaScript.
2. [20%] Infrastructure - A working product needs a solid foundation/home to work properly.
3. [15%] Peer collaboration - I believe in learning and sharing from my peers.
4. [10%] Customer interactions - I love talking to customers and how can I make them successful. It brings me a new perspective on how I work day-to-day.
5. [5%] Fun/Celebration/Hackathon/Team building etc.

Apart from work, I like to practice yoga, run, hike, read (sociology, leadership, technology), play Piano, cook, travel and road trips.

Favorite quotes:​

1. Do the best with what you have, wherever you are. Don’t worry about which car you drive. Focus on being a good driver.
2. We are concerned that we are not good enough, but the trick is to focus not on how good you are but on getting better.
3. You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.

Strengths​

According to Calling Cards, my strengths are:

1. Solving Problems (Realistic)
2. Getting Things Right (Conventional)
3. Creating Trust (Social)
4. Empowering Others (Enterprising)
5. Adding Humor (Artistic)