Tweet

Paras Chopra

5 Jan, 9 tweets, 2 min read

Been thinking that outside of one’s main job (that pays the bills), one should work on things that are timeless.

(a short thread on this)

1/ Think of happiness as not one emotion, but rather a label for a set of emotions.

Sometimes we’re happy that we ate the ice cream, other times we’re happy about the oncoming trip and sometimes we’re happy about finishing a project that took some work.

2/ In that sense, rather than chasing “more happiness”, consider creating “portfolio of happinesses”.

Do things that increase the variety of types of happiness you can experience.

3/ One’s main job is always about the here-and-now. You get paid for the value you create and you feel happy and worthy about it.

You can call this the “in the moment” happiness.

But what about “reflective” happiness?

4/ What about the fact that if all you’ve had is “in-the-moment” happiness, when you look back at the long arc of your life, all you find is fleeting moments of happiness?

5/ We all recognise that there’s a happiness in doing things that matter in the long term.

Think kids, inventions, art, music and so on.

Creation of these things give a different kind of happiness because we know they’ll outlive us.

6/ A Classic mistake with advice on how to be happy is to think in binary.

Pick one:

a) Be here-and-now. Enjoy the present moment

b) Minimize future regret. Work on things that matter

But why should you pick one?

Why not pick both?

7/ You can pick both and just like picking two stocks instead of one, you can make your portfolio of happiness less volatile.

In your job, work on something that grounds you to the present moment.

But outside it, consider building something you’d be proud of 50 years from now.

8/ That’s it.

Are you building something that’s timeless?

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @paraschopra

Paras Chopra

@paraschopra

6 Jan

How 💸 money works.

(a massive, 100-part thread)

1/ I recently finished this excellent short #book "What Has Government Done To Our Money" mises.org/library/what-h…

It's available for free and I highly recommend reading it.

But in case you want the key insights, here are my notes.

Fasten your seat belts. Here we go!

2/

== Money as a medium of exchange ==

In an economy, there's a variety of people.

Different folks specialize in producing different things and each one of them desires different things.

Read 158 tweets

Paras Chopra

@paraschopra

3 Jan

The fact that dreams exist prove that reality is a hallucination conjured by brain.

(a short thread about this idea)

1/ The only difference between hallucinations while we are awake and while asleep is that the former is constrained by our environment while the latter is constrained by possibilities.

2/ While acting in the world, it makes sense for brain to model the outside world to know what can kill it, while sleep is a relatively safer space for it ans hence relatively less need to model the external constraints.

Read 8 tweets

Paras Chopra

@paraschopra

28 Dec 20

A thread on 20 lessons I've learned from 2020

@wingify

1/ First some context:

Determined to never let a crisis go to waste, I and rest of the leaders at @wingify reflected on how the year went by for us and the lessons that stood out.

I decided that it’ll be a good idea to publicly share these learnings, so here they are.

2/ Then a caveat:

As you know professional and personal dimensions can differ widely, these ones are for the professional context only. invertedpassion.com/professional-s…

This year has given me many personal lessons too but they’re not documented in this thread.

Now for the 20 lessons.

Read 25 tweets

Paras Chopra

@paraschopra

20 Dec 20

Here’s me trying to make sense of the unprecedented 2020 bull rally of stock markets.

(A thread)

1/ The simple answer to why stock markets are up is always that there’s more demand for stocks than supply.

So the real question is: why is there more demand for stocks?

2/ Actually, what’s happening is what should happen.

Central banks across the world, especially the fed in the US, are providing cheap liquidity across the board to institutions.

With interest rates falling to 0% and below, bonds are no longer attractive.

Read 20 tweets

Paras Chopra

@paraschopra

14 Dec 20

Only two types of startups exist: technology-led and culture-led

(a short thread on this mental model)

🔥 It's also the 7th chapter of my book invertedpassion.com/types-of-start…

1/ There are two ways an entrepreneur can fail:

a) launch a product that nobody desires;

b) launch a product that people desire but with no significant advantage over established competitors (hence give no strong reason for a customer to switch away).

2/ These two failure modes have their analogous success modes:

a) culture-led startup success where a new desire is discovered and fulfilled;

b) technology-led startup success where new technology is used to fulfill an existing desire.

Read 26 tweets