1/ Why do I write? (A thread on writing)
2/ Writing is a way of having long conversations with myself
3/ I write when there’s an incredibly hard idea that I need to teach myself.

I write when I have a glimpse of an insight that’ll remain hidden until caught and penned down.
4/ Sometimes I use the double column technique to reason out emotions. pro.psychcentral.com/psychoeducatio…
5/ Every day I do garbage collection in my mind and dump it on a todo list.
6/ I maintain two dairies: one for distilled insights from stuff I’m reading and thinking about, and the second for rough sketches and workings.
7/ Ideas are vague, floating and ephemeral. Putting them on a piece of paper (or up on a blog) makes them concrete and bundle them in a crystal-shape that you can show to other people.
8/ Speaking and talking is cheap and usually off-the-record.

Writing things makes them official – your claims are then on the record, so writing _forces_ you think better.
9/ Most good ideas are nuanced.

These caveats – spoken – will bore the listener. Unspoken, they will misguide the listener (especially, if that listener is you). Writing gives you the ability to take all those caveats and convey them in a powerful and cohesive whole.
10/ Some people prefer a one-line summary. They prefer fortune-cookie sized wisdom. But good things come with an effort. That’s why I to read and write prefer long, well-argued essays, full with a gazzilian caveats, sparking a bazzilian consequent ideas.
11/ Good writing should be done first and foremost for oneself.

Good writing should be done every time the mind is overloaded with activity arising either due to confusion or insight.
12/ Treat writing as an extension of your mind, so you can either discard things you don’t need by writing stuff on disposable pages, or crystallize ideas that aren’t letting you sleep well by putting them on a blog.
13/ Write well, and write often because it’ll help you think confidently.

Writing is defragging brain.

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More from @paraschopra

Feb 22
Some random thoughts on people feeling offended / triggered online.

🧵
1/ If you’re online and have thoughts or opinions, you will end up triggering someone.

You can’t help it, neither can the other person.

It’s the nature of non-face to face interactions.
2/ Social media is perfectly designed to amplify group solidarity around hate.

That’s what gets engagement and ads.

It’s not in Twitter or Facebook’s interest to curb hate because that’ll curb engagement too.
Read 12 tweets
Feb 21
Get press by giving journalists something surprising.

a 🧵 Image
1/ Journalists don’t get excited about new products and features the same way an entrepreneur gets.
2/ This is because:

First, a journalist gets 100s of pitches every day and a particular product launch announcement is no different than the many hundreds of launch announcements sitting her inbox.

Second, aliens visiting us is news but your new feature is certainly not news.
Read 11 tweets
Feb 16
🎉 Announcing Jan 2022 winners of Gaur and Chopra Escape Velocity grants.

We're awarding 6 people under 25 years of age, a sum of Rs 50,000 each.

Their profiles in 🧵
1/ Maxito is a young 🎶 music composer.

Right now he records songs using the phone mic but this grant of Rs. 50k will help him buy equipment to take his compositions to next level and make a living out of this.

Check out his songs: open.spotify.com/album/58qDziUO…
2/ Maryam is a high school student from Ernakulum, Kerla.

She got into the semi-final round of 🧪 HSBC science innovation contest (top 200 out of 500 entries).

She will use this grant to purchase components (such as GPS module and fingerprint sensor) for her project.
Read 9 tweets
Feb 15
The biggest barrier to solving world’s hardest problems (such as poverty, climate change, animal suffering, pollution) isn’t knowledge gap, it’s their economic infeasibility.

If a problem is economically attractive, entrepreneurs and investors rush in to solve it.
Government funded programs are often seen as a way to solve these economically impractical problems.

But government isn’t well suited for innovation.

Its role, rather, should be to create economic incentives that make solving these problems attractive.
For example, carbon tax will suddenly make reducing carbon emissions economically attractive.

Similarly, eliminating subsidies to meat industry will suddenly make investment into cultivated-meat and alt-proteins economically attractive.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 7
Starting to do a 🗓️ monthly retrospective in public. Should be a fun experiment.

Here's how my Jan 2022 went and what I'm looking forward to doing in Feb.
Earlier I did a retrospective on how my 2021 went: invertedpassion.com/how-my-2021-we…

I got a ton of value from pausing and seeing where did my time go.
Hopefully, the increased frequency (from yearly to monthly) will help in becoming more intentional about life and doing it in public will help in accountability.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 7
Your 30 second pitch shouldn’t be about you.

a 🧵
1/ Entrepreneurs generally confuse their 30 second pitch as something that needs to be about what they’re doing.

This interpretation is understandable because usually anyone they meet ends up asking them what they do and the entrepreneur faithfully launches into her pitch.
2/ Unfortunately, such a pitch often ends up with the listener quickly losing interest.

This is because even though people ask what you do with good intentions, they usually do not actually deeply care about what you do.
Read 18 tweets

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