Aswath Krishnan

It's nearly the end of the year. This is when we celebrate, reflect, and set resolutions for the next year. To set resolutions, we have to figure out what we want to do. The best lever we have for a good life is taking care of our health. If we can stay healthy - physically, mentally, and emotionally - until, say 80 instead of 60, we have increased your healthy adult life span by 50%! That's 50% more life time to enjoy, learn, continue our careers, make mistakes, try new things. Taking care of our health is largely in our control and a very worthwhile thing to prioritize. There's a lot of good advice on how to be healthy. Good diet and consistent exercise significantly bolsters physical health. We can develop your mental health with challenging and creative mental activities, managing stress, and by taking time to relax. Buddhist principles and loving family/friends help with emotional health. Then the question is how do we want to spend our time. How we spend our tim...

We were at a couple of cafes and restaurants in Seattle this weekend, and remarked how hip they are, and how hip the people are. We concluded the hipness of these cafes had to mainly do with the decor - usually a combination of exposed brick wall, indoor plants, wood, and bold colored walls and furniture. The fashionable baristas and the single source, $8 drip coffee selection contributed as well. Something is hip when it is unique, interesting, and potentially worth emulating. It is the cutting edge of fashion, decor, or culture. Hip-ness is an idea generation and selection mechanism for a society. Hipsters explore and extend the edges of these fields - by being opinionated, bold,  and willing creators and perpetrators of new ideas. There is a constant cycle of what's hip. As a hip thing becomes popular, then the industrial efficiencies kick in. The big brands step in, the products get manufactured and sold at scale. Then the hip thing becomes mainstream, and something ...

Seeing a flower Makes me wonder Why such beauty Has to naturally end From bud to bloom To an inevitable gloom Perhaps it is To make us Appreciate it more Perhaps it is To give life To some things new Perhaps the end Is just an illusion There never is one As our lives just continue as many different ones -Aswath

We often get frustrated when "something doesn't make sense" - when your wife is annoyed for a seemingly frivolous reason, when an unqualified president is elected, when your boss decided to pass you up for promotion, when a business makes their customers' life hard etc. In reality, "when something doesn't make sense", it simply means that we don't understand why it happened and how you could have influenced different outcomes.  We'll be better equipped in the future and happier if we approach these situations with curiosity and figure out why, rather than get frustrated. The expectation of "something to make sense" itself assumes you know everything, and that things are always predictable and rational - both of which are mostly false. The world is complex. Don't pick a fight with reality. When something doesn't agree with your expectations, be curious, deeply understand why, and update your mental models. 

A colleague told me an interesting story about Progressive insurance. Progressive started out by offering insurance to riskier drivers, who were turned down by other carriers. To do that and survive as a business, they had to get way better at underwriting - predicting risk and pricing these policies - than other insurance carriers. Fast forward many years, Progressive is now one of the largest insurers in the US and has expanded beyond this market to serve all drivers. Progressive's early (and necessary) investment in best-in-class underwriting gives it a definite competitive edge against other carriers. In my previous company, we signed on our first Japanese client, after nearly 100+ US client. The Japanese customer had a significantly higher bar on product quality and data security requirements. It was hard to keep them happy - we had to redo our technical architecture, add more compliance procedures, improve our product reliability, and QA processes. Our CEO had to fly over ...