So yes, I have crossed the 300 days mark in the Dutch Land. A lot has happened, because stuff keeps happening, you know. But rather than a review, here are some observations/insights in general which have been on my mind (and WhatsApp, and Twitter !)
* Create products and stories. Destroy concepts and ideologies.
*Rationality and intellectual honesty are independent of credentials, and raise the effective IQ. (An average Dutch guy is more rational than many IIT/IIM graduates I know). Corollary: better decisions defeat raw analytical power in the long term.
*If you are offended about something, you are clinging to an illusion.
*Better to be clearly wrong than vaguely right.
*Don’t think different. Just think for yourself.
*Pray for what you have. Not for what you want. It’s called Gratitude.
*I am not distracted. You are boring.
*Engagement is commitment. Take the first step. Or, for many people, avoid the first step.
*Highest impact entrepreneurs make tools for creators.
*Defining mental clarity – when you can criticize your beliefs better than anyone else.
*The more things you want, the less you are likely to get.
*If no one makes fun of you, you don’t have (or express) original ideas. You repress yourself to fit in.
*A great strategist will spend least amount of time strategizing.
*You hire a book to enhance your mental models. If it fails, you should fire it. You want quality, not quantity, of hires.
*A well-thought out idea – is less and less distinguishable from execution.
*The less the apparent value, the more effort needed to sell a product.
*If you point at technicalities, your central point is weak.
*Learning new things improves knowledge of older things.
*Doing projects in which you cannot fail is largely a waste of time.
*When people say ‘I truly believe’ – it is a marker they are boring.
*You can learn more in 1 year of a startup than 5 years of a university.
*’Living in a simulation’ is the new ‘Living in a dream’.
*Career strategy -> find what is weird about you and make it 100x.
*Some people should call you crazy – some of the time.
*There is a time to let things happen, and a time to make things happen.
*In MOOCs, instructors talking to an actual class seem way more interesting than those you know are talking to a camera.
*Winning the wrong battles is worse than losing the right ones.
*Sometimes, strategy is just the set of actions you feel most emotionally comfortable about.
*Great art solves a problem – connecting to yourself.
If you enjoyed these, or didn’t, I have more:
Gaurav Mathur 
Don’t really agree with all of them. One key learning from the past one year : “Nothing is written in stone. And every rule changes”.
*Doing projects in which you cannot fail is largely a waste of time” — Sometimes people do it for practice.
“I am not distracted. You are boring.”.
You are boring to “me”. “I” don’t/can’t understand what you are saying. Some people find the same talk interesting.
I liked these
“A great strategist will spend least amount of time strategizing.”
“Learning new things improves knowledge of older things.”
“Don’t think different. Just think for yourself.”
This one made me laugh out aloud.
“The more things you want, the less you are likely to get.”
And this one’s the best
“If you point at technicalities, your central point is weak.”
Didn’t quite get this.
“If you are offended about something, you are clinging to an illusion.”
Haha.. these are not rules in stone, but slices of my experience. They are not true even for me many times.
““I am not distracted. You are boring.”. — I almost added ‘to me’ at the end of it, then removed, to make it more disturbing 🙂
Regarding the offending thing, maybe I didn’t articulate it well. But check the mental clarity part. We are not offended about things on which we have a clear view. But when an idea is sold to us (religion/country), and we buy it, then anything that hits that idea hurts us.
Happy the a few were fun 🙂