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Tag: jeff bezos

Becoming Amazonian

Becoming Amazonian

Published April 2, 2021

Jess Bezos, the world’s richest man, has 4 core strategies that he believes his company Amazon should live by, in order to remain successful.

  1. Obsess over the customer, rather than the competitor
  2. Be eager to invent, which goes hand in hand with failure
  3. Work towards operational excellence, and
  4. Think long-term

I couldn’t help but wonder how awesome these would be when applied to success in our lives too. Why should these only be useful to Amazon, or to any company? Here’s how we can repurpose these for measuring our own success.

  1. If we ourselves are the product, then obsess over the value we deliver to our family, friends, colleagues, employer
  2. Reinvent ourselves for the better, learn more, read more, and pick ourselves up from failure shamelessly
  3. Do all our work – personal or professional – with excellence as the only acceptable standard
  4. Choose long-term sustainable solutions over short-term band-aid fixes

Possible to implement these?

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Day One

Day One

Published August 1, 2020

Amazon has a concept called Day One. Jeff Bezos has written about Day One in detail in his letters to shareholders. His idea is that Amazon employees should always consider themselves as though working for the very first day of Amazon’s existence. This way no one takes Amazon’s success for granted, and everyone continues to work as doggedly as possible. No past successes will form a ceiling for future achievements.

This is a great philosophy for a company no doubt. But I can’t help but wonder if this is healthy when applied to our personal lives.

The person who couldn’t understand what “Adios amigos” meant in Spanish one year ago, is now able to converse well in the language after taking classes. But her thought? “I’m still so far away from attaining native fluency, I feel so stupid, and my progress is so slow.” The person who months ago only knew ABCDEFG as alphabets can now play “River Flows in You” on the piano. But his thought? “Damn those YouTube child prodigies – here I am at 45 struggling with sight reading, while my eyes can barely keep up with the speeds of their hands!” The person who couldn’t see his feet because his tummy got in the way, has now lost 30 kilos. But his thought? “My abs still are not visible – I hate my body, especially that stubborn lower belly fat.”

If any of the above seem familiar, that is because all too often, we are critical of ourselves beyond reason. We can then re-purpose Day One this way. Think of that first day when we did not even know anything about the skill / ability we wanted. From zero understanding of vocabulary, or music or dance or coding etc. we have now become significantly better.

Being happy with this fantastic progress from day one, let us continue to take small steps every day, to reach grand heights one day.

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