All posts by Paras Chopra

Like most technologies, search engines are both good and bad at the same time. They’re good because they open up vast resources of information. Today, our ability to know things instantly would seem like magic to previous generations. At the same time, precisely because searching is so easy, we’ve become habitual for googling for each little problem or doubt in our head.

In programming circles, coding by Googling is popular, but this is equally true for all professions. Because search results are so damn fast and convenient, we are now slowly getting wired to automatically and subconsciously Google any unresolved query in our head. This automatic reliance on search engines is dangerous because it is replacing our capacity for original thinking with second-hand information written by others.   ...  Read the entire post →

Mind projection fallacy happens when we assume that most other people are like us. It’s an error to assume that they have similar desires and fears towards things as we do.

Normally, this is not such a big issue. The worst that can happen in most cases is perhaps an exchange of incredulous looks (for example, when a cricket fan encounters a non-cricket who doesn’t know who Sachin Tendulkar is).

But for entrepreneurs, the mind projection fallacy is dangerous because it means they can end up working on the wrong problem. ...  Read the entire post →

When it comes to our life and decisions, we’re optimistic rationalizers. Every New Year’s Eve, we take resolutions that are grounded in perfectly valid reasons – reducing weight, quitting cigarettes, reading more books and so on. If someone asks why we want to read books, we can confidently blurt out that it will expand our worldview.

Fast-forward a couple of weeks in the new year, and we’re often back to our old ways. It’s spectacular that even when we quit our yearly resolution within weeks, we always have good reasons for why we abandoned our goals. (We’d rarely acknowledge that we’re lazy or are addicted to cigarettes.) ...  Read the entire post →

People are generally nice in person. You’d know this if you have ever gone to parties where everyone is super nice to others but as soon as the party is over, they start gossiping about the ones who’ve left. Very rarely would anyone tell a person at the party that they look like a clown (while often thinking in their head of the same).

This tendency of people not to tell honestly what they have in mind misleads entrepreneurs when they seek feedback on their idea. Even if the idea is obviously flawed, in general, people won’t tell that to an entrepreneur’s face. This means, if you’re an entrepreneur, you rarely get to hear why your idea sucks. ...  Read the entire post →

Thinking is expensive for an animal – our brain consumes almost 20% of the energy of the body (even at rest). Hence, the brain takes whatever shortcuts it can to do less deliberate thinking (that requires more energy) and more automatic thinking (that requires less energy).

There’s another name for such automatic thinking: cognitive bias.

The word bias is used because our preprogrammed ways of thinking bias us towards paying more attention to certain information at the expense of ignoring other information. So, cognitive biases are systematic errors in viewing of the world. They are very hard to correct because you literally see the world through a lens that’s painted with cognitive biases.  ...  Read the entire post →

Imagine you are tasked with making a map of the world. How would you go about it? Think about this problem for a moment before reading on.

Perhaps you’d start with a stable reference point – like the North Pole – and start surveying Earth’s topography around it. Or you’d rely on the satellite imagery to gather the raw data. But regardless of what’s the source of your data, pretty soon you’d run into a challenge. Earth is a 3D surface, while you’re asked to prepare a 2D map. There is no simple way to present 3D information in 2D without losing fidelity of actual information.   ...  Read the entire post →

Most entrepreneurs believe that they’re good leaders because their team does what they ask them to do.

But that’s not leadership – that’s simply people working because you’re paying them money to work. There’s a big difference between compliance and commitment. Entrepreneurs often get compliance with their decisions, but they end up thinking they’re getting commitment.

Leadership is difficult because human nature is complex. Humans are capable of simultaneously admiring and despising people who have a higher status, more money or better prospects than them. This makes the job of a leader tricky because she has to focus on the quality of work and get the job done, despite who did it (an admirer or a hater). The leader has to somehow navigate people’s widely different emotions, desires, and personalities and make them work together to deliver an organization’s goals.  ...  Read the entire post →