Asif Akbar

Goodhart’s law simply states that  “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure” . We see this happen in everyday life far too often but may not realize its effects. For example, a state in India decided to measure the success of its efforts toward education with the percentage of students who passed in 10th class exam. The administrations tried to improve education, but that’s a long process and can take decades to show results whereas the elections happen every 5 years. If a government wants to show improvements in results, they need more direct and quick ways. The administration figured a more manageable approach was to make the exams easier. They published small guides which would have a set of questions that were most likely to be asked in an exam and prepared exam papers from those question sets. Students now had a quick way to pass the exam with less study. The method proved effective. The passing percentages improved. But instead of improving education, ...

Reading Time 3 mins Career Trajectory Career trajectories go in a series of exponential graphs. You get a swift jump for a couple of months followed by years of stagnation. The most challenging part I have seen people go through is their first stagnation. This is where people see a way out through courses or an MBA degree. Though both are viable options, I have seen one area a lot of folks overlook is communications.  When you start your career, you are expected to learn skills needed for a particular "Job to be done". You are a cog in the machine. You fulfill a specific function. As you grow in your career, you learn specific pieces of information about the company and your skill that increase your value. This is where you get stuck.  What makes humans great is our ability to collaborate. You have to understand how different pieces fit together to make the whole. As you grow you are expected to lead. To share what you have learned across hierarchies.  Can you be trusted ...

  5 Ways Notion Helps Me Stay Productive:  A blog about the ways Notion helps with productivity in my personal life. I started using Notion 2 years ago. It was a small community. The discovery of the product itself was revolutionary. I have returned to Notion every day from that day onwards. I started using Notion for my work projects. I have tons of archived projects now, but I really love using it for personal work too. The most amazing part of Notion is its adaptability to your individual taste. It can be as simple as you want it to be or as complex as you can. Build systems that run workflows, projects, collaboration, dependencies etc. Some of my most favorite use cases are: My idea packs I can create an idea pack of any topics I'm passionate about, and I update them every time inspiration strikes. Reading Tracker: Library I use the custom built library database to keep track of what books I've already read and what books I want to read next. When I'm done with a book...

  How Amazon became a $1,400,000,000,000 company with the flywheel effect What is Flywheel effect Flywheel effect is a marketing strategy that hopes to drive ongoing customer purchases by building loyalty, engagement, and advocacy using marketing and social media. The goal is to simultaneously convince current customers to purchase more, while servicing customer requests and creating customer advocates. It only works if you are looking for customers and not just sign ups. Customer centricity is at the center of Flywheel effect. Focus on delivering value to your customers and cultivate and empower your customer advocates to deliver Flywheel effect. Flywheel Marketing Toolkit Delight not just serve The flywheel effect is a marketing philosophy that centers around delight not just service, or sending customers away satisfied with the purchase. There is a strong focus on understanding customer needs without ignoring the opportunity to improve and find ways to keep these customers thr...

 Analytics nuggets that will 10x your understanding of your audience Essential Metrics every creator must understand CTR - Click Through Rate It is Clicks / Impressions. This tells you if what people are seeing is interesting enough to make them click a button/ link. If its low, improve your copy and creative Conversion Rate This is conversions / Visitors. This tells you how many of your users are interested in buying your product. if this is too low, reiterate how the purchase can add value to their life make it relevant to the users who are coming to the website Optimize it for the segment of users with highest conversion rate Add social proofing Frequency You can use sessions per user as an indicator of frequency This tells you how many time a person is coming to your site You want your users to come back again You want them to use your product. To increase Frequency Promise them what they will get when they return Set expectations for their next visit Reach out to them via ema...

 Often we have ideas and thats what they remain forever. To achieve a goal, its important to define it. YCombinators application form gives an excellent templates for Startups to define themselves.  Even if you aren't considering applying, answer these to get some clarity around the idea. Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less. What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do. Which category best applies to your company? How far along are you? How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time? Please explain. Are people using your product? Do you have revenue? If you are applying with the same idea as a previous batch, did anything change? If you applied with a different idea, why did you pivot and what did you learn from the last idea? Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making? What's...