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Navin Kabra Profile picture
@NGKabra
Jul 13, 2022 • 70 tweets • 20 min read • Read on X
Rewriting my thread on #karmanyevaadhikaraste because it is important enough to get right

The first few tweets are a simple introduction and you can skip those because it will be familiar to most Indians

But the rest of the thread, the example applications, are the good stuff
Bhagavad Gita, chapter 2, verse 47:

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेसषु कदाचन
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते संगोसत्वकर्मणि

You have the right to action alone, not to its fruits
Don't be motivated by the fruits, and don't get attached to inaction either
The first part is famous and everybody quotes it: focus on your actions, not on the outcomes.

The second part is rarely quoted: don't use this as an excuse to not do anything. Do the right thing (even if it sometimes might seem pointless.)
When I first heard karmanyevaadhikaaraste, it seemed almost like a platitude to me: one of those statements that sound nice but are not really that useful in life. (Like "we believe in customer delight"; who doesn't?)

I later realized how wrong I was
The reason karmanyevaadhikaaraste is so important to me is because it actually helps me decide when facing difficult decisions. (And prevents negative spirals when things don't go right in spite of best efforts.)

With the rest of this thread, I hope to illustrate some of this
It is amazing to me how often advice by modern thinkers (in India as well as the west) boils down to #karmanyevaadhikaaraste:
Analyze the quoted tweet and you'll note that "do chase" correspond mainly to actions/processes and "don't chase" are results
Here's @ShaneAParrish (of the excellent Farnam Street Blog: fs.blog) rephrasing #karmanyevaadhikaaraste

x.com/ShaneAParrish/…
Students today are excessively focused on jobs/salaries, says @DheerajSanghi (VC JKLU, ex-prof/dean/director at IITK, IIIT-D etc)

This is a result of the entrance exam culture and is bad for their long-term career. They should focus on learning
Richard Feynman was one of the greatest scientists and teachers of the 20th century. Here is some advice from him. Notice how #3 is a corollary of #karmanyevaadhikaaraste

Billionaire Investor Howard Marks: "The quality of a decision cannot be judged based on the quality of the outcome. Good decisions can result in bad outcomes, and vice versa."

(Earlier I talked about preventing negative spirals when things to wrong? This is how you do it)
From @JamesClear, best selling author of Atomic Habits (a book I've recommended to so many people!) adds these nuances to understanding #karmanyevaadhikaaraste:
And @JamesClear also emphasizes the often missed second line of the #karmanyevaadhikaaraste shlok, the one on not getting attached to inaction:

And here's @AdamMGrant organizational psychologist, best-selling author, the youngest tenured professor at Wharton, on understanding success:
Any success involves getting lucky. This means that anyone can get unlucky and fail. This is why #karmanyevaadhikaaraste is important.

Here's @bhogleharsha, famous cricket commentator on this topic:
Any fans on Hamilton (the Broadway hit musical) here?

@Lin_Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, also channels #karmanyevaadhikaaraste:
The main message of #karmanyevaadhikaraste is to shift you from outcome thinking to systems thinking.

OUTCOME MINDSET prevents you from making that ONE mistake again.

SYSTEMS MINDSET prevents you from using the mental models that caused that mistake.
And @MSDhoni says the same thing:
Instead of simply saying "the effort is more important than the outcome" a better phrasing comes from @patrissimo

"Effort is the dial you can best turn."

(See the full thread under the quoted tweet)
Use long-term thinking to decide on the "right" process to follow, then stick to that, even if it doesn't work in the short-term.

Following the process is deterministic, success is probabilistic. Do not modify the process based on short-term results.

A variation on this.

Long term thinking (hard) vs long term commitment (easier).

In fact, #karmanyevaadhikaaraste thinking is so important to a successful marriage that it deserves a thread on its own. One-of-these-days™...
A different way of using #karmanyevaadhikaaraste is when looking at others: do you admire/focus on their achievements or their process?

So, for example, what you should admire about Jeff Bezos isn't his achievements, it is his systems:
As you should have gathered by now, #karmanyevaadhikaaraste is closely intertwined with luck and probability. @anafabrega11, an educator, has a great thread analyzing this and what it means for kids and parenting and teaching:

The Gita wouldn't approve of you playing poker (tamasik) but if you did #karmanyevaadhikaaraste teaches you how to play well:

A while back, I wrote an article on #karmanyevaadhikaaraste. Some of it is material from this thread, but it contains other material too:
futureiq.substack.com/p/karmanyevaad…
Success vs happiness and how #karmanyevaadhikaaraste helps you there:

Kobe Bryant, one of the greats of basketball, talks about success and failure and following the process: pretty much #karmanyevaadhikaraste (h/t @kshashi)
Yesterday, I wrote a thread on best practices in hiring from a Harvard Business Review article by @tylercowen et al. See how one of the top recommendations there is also a variation on #karmanyevaadhikaaraste:
Another one from @ShaneAParrish (via @docbhooshan):
And this one from @docbhooshan from his own medical practice and the importance of #karmanyevaadhikaaraste for the doctor as well as the patient:

As @hcvwarrior indicates, some people misinterpret #karmanyevaadhikaaraste to mean that you should ignore goals/outcomes completely. Don't do any goal-oriented planning. That is INCORRECT.

You can (and must) do goal-oriented planning to choose your actions, but don't get *attached* to the goals:

- Make sure to use long-term goals
- Realize that outcomes are probabilistic, so correct-action-wrong-outcome is NOT a failure
- But wrong-action-correct-outcome is wrong
#karmanyevaadhikaaraste is important when giving advice: Most advice is not taken. But don't stop giving advice when asked for it. Focus on improving the advice you give and how you give it, but remember that you're not entitled to it being followed:

#karmanyevaadhikaaraste really helps me in day-to-day life when I do something for family/friends and it is not well received because of miscommunication or due to a bad outcome via bad luck or something else. They're angry/disappointed/sad in you based on outcomes.
In such cases, it is easy to get stressed/angry/anxious about what your friend/family is thinking about you. Often attempts to mollify them are rebuffed or cause other problems.

This is when you use #karmanyevaadhikaaraste
Did you do the right thing at the time, given what you knew? If yes, then you can sleep easy. Keep doing this and over the long-term things work out. The real picture comes out ultimately

As @Makarand_S points out "all you can do is <act> with integrity"

Important parts of the famed Japanese TQM (Total Quality Management) philosophy are also #karmanyevaadhikaaraste:

see the whole quoted thread:

Karmanyevaadhikaaraste in cancer treatment
Quoted tweet shows why karmanyevaadhikaaraste is important while tweeting too.

Focus on easily measurable outcomes and you end up focusing on the wrong tweets. Instead, focus on tweeting right and trust that the right outcomes will occur in the long term.
"hold lightly to goals & firmly to intentions" is a restatement of karmanyevaadhikaaraste, from Pixar
“A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in light of the information available until that point” —NN Taleb in Fooled by Randomness (via @docbhooshan)

Why is why #karmanyevaadhikaaraste
In fact, the table in the quoted tweet gives a powerful reason why you should focus on your actions and not on the fruits thereof
Inc has an entire article on Google CEO Sundar Pichai's 4-word advice on how to lead.

The 4 words are: "Reward efforts, not outcomes"

Which is just a simple corollary of #karmanyevaadhikaaraste

inc.com/nick-hobson/in…
This paragraph is from @G_S_Bhogal's article on "Stoicism: The Ancient Remedy to the Modern Age"

Note how well it tracks the philosophy of #karmanyevaadhikaaraste Image
If our schools followed the karmanyevaadhikaaraste philosophy (which they don't) and focused on the process rather than the outcomes, students would like school more

Quoted tweet is from a book, "Why don't students like school". (It is a thread. The whole thread is good reading)
#karmanyevaadhikaaraste
Is it irresponsible to not feel responsible for the outcomes of your actions? @docbhooshan finds the answer to this in the 18th chapter of the Gita (and that Stoic philosophy also concurs)
To be a good researcher you have to follow the #karmanyevaadhikaaraste philosophy

via @shukla_omkar
"Let your acts be directed towards a worthy goal; but do not ask if they will reach it" Leo Szilard's 2nd commandment
Amazon divides their metrics into controllable input metrics and uncontrollable output metrics. Output metrics are a distraction because they're lagging indicators that can'd be directly influenced. It's better to focus on what you have direct control over: inputs —@david_perell
This advice from The Talmud (ancient religious text of the Jews) is similar to karmanyevaadhikaaraste...

It even captures the second part of the shloka: inaction is not an option

(thanks @docbhooshan for the heads up)
#karmanyevaadhikaraate t.co/VAAx3ezm99
👀
"Learning to live in such a way that nothing is experienced as either an advantage or a disadvantage" —Alan Watts

It's often hard to tell whether the fruits of your action are positive or negative, argues this article


(thanks @docbhooshan for the tip)themarginalian.org/2015/11/06/ala…
In this excerpt, is Bezos arguing against #karmanyevaadhikaaraste? What do you think?

eugenewei.com/blog/2017/5/11…Image
Update on yesterday's tweet ("is Bezos arguing against #karmanyevaadhikaaraste")

@kshashi points out that sometimes you need to make sure you understand karma correctly
It is also important to reiterate: Karmanyevaadhikaaraste does not mean you should ignore goals altogether. It just says that you are not *entitled* to achieve them: but you have to keep working at them even if you don't achieve them

Genius is 1% inspiration 99% prespiration, said Edison. @jasonfried points out that the 1% will probably not occur at the beginning and can't really be planned for so be willing to put in the prespiration daily. Needs lots of #karmanyevaadhikaaraste energy points out @kshashi
Another phrasing of #karmanyevaadhikaaraste:
This description of the creative process is so much #karmanyevaadhikaaraste ("You become creative by creating" "You gotta keep forcing it, forcing it, forcing it…it doesn’t matter [what comes out of your mind/mouth].”)

Thanks @kshashi for the suggestion

Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and arguably one of the most powerful/important people today) has straight up quoted #karmanyevaadhikaaraste:


( thanks @6C1_16 for the heads up )
"I play to play", @amitvarma quotes chess great, Petrosian, in a post which is essentially about #karmanyevaadhikaaraste: (thanks @6C1_16 for the heads up)

indiauncut.substack.com/p/i-play-to-pl…Image
Karmanyevaadhikaaraste is not easy to implement in your life as @eshear points out here. I can vouch for this from personal experience: feeling good about having followed the process even when the reward doesn't materialize is not easy
GOAT filmmaker gives advice to writers on how to write... and you can see why #karmanyevaadhikaaraste as a philosophy makes sense
Loved this: Karmanyevaadhikaaraste as a meme (thanks @RajShirolkar
)

Hmm... Can I call this the weak form of Karmanyevaadhikaaraste? 🤔

In which young *Arjun* learns about karmanyevaadhikaaraste from a great master!!

(Thanks @kshashi for the pointing out the tweet for this thread as well as the relevance of the name)

@kshashi One of the counter intuitive consequences of the #karmanyevaadhikaaraste philosophy is that you get results when you stop caring about the results

@kshashi Here is @rohit11 giving #karmanyevaadhikaaraste advice to an ethical hacker



Karmanyevaadhikaaraste sounds very bland until you start seeing examples of it in day-to-day life; and then it is one of the most powerful ideas ever
@kshashi @rohit11 And here's @simonsarris on how you should try to find joy in efforts rather than in goals. See the full article: Efforts goals and job

(via @JamesClear's 3-2-1 newsletter) map.simonsarris.com/p/efforts-and-…Image

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More from @NGKabra

Navin Kabra Profile picture
Mar 4
What the hell?! This is the most insane science I've heard of.

In this procedure, surgeons remove a patient's tooth+bone, drill a hole in it and put a lens, and then they IMPLANT THE TOOTH IN THE PATIENT'S CORNEA!?

What?!

The more I looked into this, the more insane it is. 🧵
I had so many questions...

Is this some bizarre evil scientist Nazi experiment? Nope. It's a procedure invented in the 1960s and is performed every year in several locations around the world.

Including Sankara Nethralaya in India. 🧵
Why the hell are they putting a tooth in someone's eye?!

There are patients where normal corneal transplants fail (repeatedly) because the patient's immune system rejects the transplanted cornea.

This is rare, but in such cases, a tooth is the only thing that works well. 🧵
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Navin Kabra Profile picture
Feb 20
Tall Quantum Claims: Microsoft has a breathless (but difficult to understand) press release about a new quantum computing chip which makes it appear as though they've solved Quantum Computing. This isn't true, but the science of the claims is fascinating 🧵
We don't know for sure if Microsoft have (so far) invented a new type of material (topoconductor) which allows a new type of qubit (Majorana zero modes) that could revolutionize QC. But let me give a high-level explanation of what's being claimed and why it could be a big deal 🧵
This is a rather complex topic: I'll have to explain bits, qubits, why error correction is so important in qubits, Majorana particles and how qubits based on them help with the error correction problem 🧵
Read 28 tweets
Navin Kabra Profile picture
Dec 14, 2024
I recently found out that Akbar's wife, popularly (but mistakenly) known as Jodhabai, was an accomplished international trader and her business problems possibly resulted in changing the fate of India: ensuring the British colonized India instead of Portugal 1/36
So, this is the story of how a Hindu queen's Muslim ship, carrying Hajj pilgrims in Christian waters patrolled by the Portuguese armada resulted in changing the course of Indian History. (Sorry can't find the original source of for this wonderful sentence) 2/36
But first, what do I mean by "mistakenly known as Jodhabai"?

The name of Akbar's wife, mother of Salim (aka Jahangir), was not Jodhabai. Women of the Mughal harem were referred to by their birth place (or place where they were "first viewed with affection by the Emperor") 3/36
Read 44 tweets
Navin Kabra Profile picture
Jul 15, 2024
Who are Indians descended from? Aryans from Europe? Dravidians who've been "here" forever? The Indus valley civilization?

A controversial question for 150+ years, but now we have DNA evidence that answers these questions with a high degree of certainty.

🧵 Image
The controversy originated with the (now discredited) "Aryan Invasion Theory" which began as a respectable theory of how Indian, European, and Persian languages all have a common ancestry: but was quickly adopted by racist white Europeans
It started in late 17xx when William Jones, a linguistic scholar, was appointed a judge of the Bengal Supreme Court. He came to India and noticed striking the similarities between Sanskrit, Persian, Gothic, Greek, Latin.
Read 42 tweets
Navin Kabra Profile picture
Jun 21, 2024
Devanagari is an extremely elegant script. But this was never explained to us in school.

A thread on the awesomeness that is devanagari.

Let's start with the things that my teachers did *not* teach me in school:
Why do both श and ष exist? (The difference in pronunciation was never explained) Why do ङ and ञ exist?

What is ऋ? Is it pronounced “ri” or “ru”, and in any case, why does it even exist if री and रु exist?
Much later in life, when I understood the meaning of the rows and columns in Devanagari, everything fell into place and I saw the beauty and elegance of it all.
Read 17 tweets
Navin Kabra Profile picture
Dec 13, 2023
Ever wondered why "sin" (of trigonometry) is called "sin"? Today, I decided to find out, and the history is fascinating. It comes from the Sanskrit word for bowstring which somehow got translated to the Latin word for the "pallu" of a toga.

Follow me down this rabbit hole 🧵
Let's start with this wonderful image I received from a friend on WhatsApp (source unknown). Here, you can clearly see why "tan" is called "tan". But what about "sin"?

If you think of the solid yellow arc as a bow, then the solid blue line (sine) is the bowstring 🧵 Image
jīvá (जीवा) the Sanskrit word for bowstring is the name given to sin by Aryabhata the inventor¹ of the sine and cosine functions.

How do you get from there to a toga? A series of interesting accidents

--
¹ Ok fine, discoverer 🧵
Read 7 tweets

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