Category: Learn

“Discipline is Destiny” – Ryan Holiday

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” – JIM ROHN

By embracing the principles of self-discipline outlined in “Discipline is Destiny,” you can achieve greatness and fulfillment. Control your actions, thoughts, and emotions, honor the Stoic tradition of living virtuously, and face life’s challenges with purpose and power.

The Power of Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is not about restriction. It’s about taking control of your life. By mastering your lower self and strengthening your higher self, you become empowered and unstoppable in achieving your goals and dreams.

Benefits of Self-discipline:

  • Practicing good habits
  • Enduring challenges
  • Setting boundaries
  • Resisting temptations

Self-discipline provides structure and balance, counteracting the chaos of unrestricted freedom. It’s essential to unlocking your true potential and living a fulfilling, happy life.

Take Control of Your Body Before It Takes Control of You

Being self-disciplined about your body means boosting your endurance and investing in yourself for the long term to live longer and better.

Strenuous Activities: Incorporate physically challenging activities into your daily routine.

Seek Discomfort: Embrace discomfort to build resilience and toughness.

Consistency: Show up daily, regardless of how you feel, to build momentum and achieve long-term success.

Build on Your Physical Self-Discipline to Temper the Mind

Once your body is under control, it’s time to work on moderating your mind. This involves balancing how you feel, think, and respond amid life’s chaos.

Patience and Response: Use the moment between stimulus and response to gather and think critically.

Focus and Flow: Train yourself to focus and enter a flow state, blocking out distractions.
Embrace Imperfection: Aim to do your best rather than strive for perfection, and learn from your mistakes.

Align Your Body, Mind, and Spirit to Achieve Greatness

Greatness requires aligning your physical, mental, and spiritual selves, much like the charioteers of ancient times who mastered multiple aspects simultaneously.

Balance and Harmony: Achieve success by balancing discipline with kindness, compassion, and love.

Self-Actualization: Temperance is about self-actualization, not isolation, and involves being kinder and more accepting of others.
Encouragement: Encourage yourself and others, recognizing that everyone is on their journey.

Self-Discipline and Self-Love

Being self-disciplined doesn’t mean being hard on yourself when you fail. It means holding yourself to high standards while being your best friend and supporter.

High Standards: Challenge your limits and don’t accept excuses, but show compassion toward yourself.

Self-support: Encourage yourself in moments of failure, recognizing that everyone makes mistakes.

Growth and Thriving: Use self-love and support to grow and thrive, even in difficult moments.

Nuggets from “The Almanac of Naval Ravikant” by Eric Jorgenson

Wealth

  • Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.
  • You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity – a piece of a business – to gain your financial freedom.
  • You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.

Business & Profession

  • You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity – a piece of a business – to gain your financial freedom.
  • Pick an industry where you can play long term games with long term people.
  • Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
  • Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and, above all, integrity.
  • Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

Specific Knowledge

  • Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.
  • Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you.
  • Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.
  • When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools.
  • Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.

Leverage what you know best

  • Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.
  • Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).
  • Code and media are permissionless leverage. They’re the leverage behind the newly rich. You can create software and media that works for you while you sleep.
  • If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts.Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.
  • Set and enforce an aspirational personal hourly rate. If fixing a problem will save less than your hourly rate, ignore it. If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.

Learning to be the Best

  • Judgement requires experience, but can be built faster by learning foundational skills.
  • Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers.
  • Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. You get what you repeat.”

Atomic Habits , a breakthrough book from James Clear is the most comprehensive guide on how to change your habits and get better every day. This short note based on the book, is written in two parts. Part one helps us understand the importance of our habits and why they matter. More importantly, it provides answers to a series of “How to” questions that naturally occur in the context of building good habits and breaking the bad ones. In the second part of the note, six important ideas, concepts and principles are summarised that will help the reader in building habits that he or she desires to.

Part One – What ? Why ? How ?

– What is a Habit ?
– Why do Habits Matter ?
– How Habits Work ?
– How To Start A New Habit?
– How to Build Better Habits ?
– How to Break Bad Habits ?
– How to Enjoy Habits that are Hard ?

What is a Habit ?

“Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery”

Habits are mental shortcuts. A habit is a routine or behavior that is carried out repeatedly and most of the time automatically. When you are faced with a problem repeatedly, your brain starts to automate the process of solving it. Your habits are sets of automatic solutions that solve the problems you come across regularly.The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible. A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.

If you find yourself struggling to build a good habit or break a bad one, it is not because you have lost your ability to improve. It is often because you have not yet crossed what James Clear calls, Plateau of Latent Potential. When you finally break through the Plateau of Latent Potential, people will call it an overnight success. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.

The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors. Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time. The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

Why do Habits Matter ?

IDENTITY -> PROCESSES -> OUTCOMES

Habits shape our identity. Our actions define who we are. Our habits are a reflection of our identity. The more we repeat a behavior, the more we reinforce the identity associated with that behavior. For example: if you make your bed every day, you are reinforcing the identity of someone who is organized and tidy.

There are three layers of behavior change:

1. Change in your outcomes. This means changing your results, for example, losing weight.
2. Change in your processes. This means changing your habits and systems: for example, developing a daily exercise routine and diet.
3. Change in your identity. This means changing your beliefs: the way you see yourself and the ones around you. For example, if you exercise regularly, you are reinforcing the identity of someone who is fit and healthy.

With outcome-based habits, the focus is on what you want to achieve. With identity-based habits, the focus is on who you wish to become. James Clear argues that the best way to change our identity is to focus on changing our habits. By starting with small, easy habits, we can gradually build up a new identity that is more aligned with our goals. True behavior change is identity change. You could choose and start a habit because of motivation, but you’ll stick with it only if it becomes part of your identity. The real reason habits matter is not because they can get you better results (although they can do that), but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.

How Habits Work ?

CUE -> CRAVING -> RESPONSE -> REWARD

The main components of habit formation are:

1. Cue: It causes your brain to begin a behavior. It is a bit of information that predicts a reward.
2. Craving: It is the motivation behind every habit. Without a desire, we don’t have a reason to act.
3. Response: This is the very habit you perform; it can take the form of a thought or an action.
4. Reward: The end goal of every habit.

Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition. The amount of time you have been performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you have performed it.You could do something three times in thirty days, or three hundred times. The frequency will always make the difference.

Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings.

How To Start A New Habit?

‘After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].

One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking. The two most common cues are time and location. Creating an implementation intention is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a specific time and location. Habit stacking is a strategy you can use to pair a new habit with a current habit.

The habit stacking formula is: ‘After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].

Using the Environment to Build New Habits.

Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. Small changes in context can lead to large changes in behavior over time. Every habit is initiated by a cue. We are more likely to notice cues that stand out. Make the cues of good habits obvious in your environment. Gradually, your habits become associated not with a single trigger but with the entire context surrounding the behavior. The context becomes the cue. It is easier to build new habits in a new environment because you are not fighting against old cue

How to Build Better Habits ?

A habit needs to be enjoyable for it to last. What is instantly rewarded is done again. what instantly punished is ditched. To get a habit to stick You need to feel instantly successful, even if in a small way. The Four Laws of Behavior Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. For example, If we wish to build a habit of a daily work out, here’s how we can apply this 4 point formula.

1. Make it obvious
Put your gym bag by the door so you see it first thing in the morning.

2. Make it attractive
Listen to your favorite music while you work out.

3. Make it easy
Start your day with a 10-minute walk.

4. Make it satisfying
Write down your progress in a habit tracker.

How to Break Bad Habits ?

Self-control is a short-term strategy when forming habits. You may be able to resist temptation once, but you will most likely not be able to have the willpower to control your desires each time they appear. A better method is to cut bad habits off at the source. For example, if some want’s to get out of the habit of smoking, here’s how he can apply this 4 point formula.

1. Make it invisible.
Hide your cigarettes so you don’t see them every time.

2. Make it unappealing.
Think about how bad your breath smells after you smoking.

3. Make it hard to perform.
Set a goal to work for 25 minutes, even if you don’t feel like it.

4. Make it frustrating.
Remember how bad slacking off feels.

How to Enjoy Habits that are Hard ?

Create a motivation ritual by doing something you really like right before a difficult habit.

Part Two – Ideas, Concepts, Principles

– 1% Improvement Everyday
– The 2-Minute Rule
– The Goldilocks Rule for Staying Motivated
– The Law Of Least Effort
– Walk Slowly, But Never Backward
– Focus on Systems

1% Improvement Everyday

“If you can get 1 % better each day you will end up 37 times better by the time you’re done.
If you get worst 1% every single day end up reaching nearly 0″ – JAMES CLEAR

Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run. It is about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.

The 2-Minute Rule

If you can do an action in two minutes or less, tackle it at the moment — and don’t delay.
The rule was created by David Allen in Getting Things Done & James Clear recommends it for habit building as well: When you start a new habit it should take less than two minutes to do.
Any habit can be scaled down into a 2-minute version:
• Read before bed each night becomes read one page;
• 30 minutes of exercise becomes take out my yoga mat;
• Fold the laundry becomes fold one pair of socks.

The Goldilocks Rule for Staying Motivated

We experience peak motivation when we are performing actions that are right on the edge our current abilities. Not too difficult, not too easy.

The Law Of Least Effort

We will instinctively choose the path that requires least amount of work. This is a universal law that has huge implications in habit formation:
• Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.
• Reduce the friction associated with good behaviors. When friction is low, habits are easy.
• Increase the friction associated with bad behaviors. When friction is high, habits are difficult.

Walk Slowly, But Never Backward

It’s easy to get discouraged when you’re trying to change your habits, especially if you don’t see results immediately. But if you keep taking small steps forward, even if they’re not huge, you’ll eventually reach your goals.
For example: if you’re trying to lose weight, you might be tempted to skip a workout or eat a unhealthy meal. But if you do that, you’ll be setting yourself back. It’s better to make small, healthy choices that will help you reach your goals in the long run.

Focus on Systems

Goals are good for establishing a direction, but systems are best for making progress. Goals are about the results you hope to reach. Systems are about the mechanisms that lead to those results.

To conclude, let’s accept that on an average 90% of our daily decisions happen automatically, many shaped by our environment. Thus, most decisions are a habit, not a deliberate choice. Therefore, to make smarter choices, we need to design smarter defaults. And so, habits can be developed by shaping the invisible defaults of life.

The Animal that Became God

“Fire gave us power
Farming made us hungry for more
Money gave us purpose
Science made us deadly”
– YUVAL NOAH HARARI

This evening, during a stroll with Purvi, I expressed my concerns about the complexity and challenges of the modern day life. Her response was that we need to adapt. But then, humans have always adapted and not just that, they have transformed almost everything that they have been able to.

It was by chance later in the night that I happened to pick up the book Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, and read a summary of the book. This book let’s you dive into depths of humans, from the begining, to how things stand today. It echoes and explains why the modern day life has become complex. The following explaination from the book, sums up how the complexity has grown with the passage of time.

Seventy Thousand yeas ago, homosapiens were still an insignificant animal minding their own business in a corner of Africa.

In the following millennia, they transformed themselves into the masters of the entire planet and the terror of the ecosystem.

Today they stand on the verge of becoming God, poised to acquire not only eternal youth, but also the divine abilities of creation and destruction.

There are more thought provoking facts that are well explained and articulated in the book. In my future posts, I shall make a attempt to share my thoughts along with the author’s narratives. I hope, I can find my answer, and a solution.

The Success Mantra – Distilled From My All Time Favourite Book Reads

“Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act up on must inevitably come to pass.” -Paul Meyer

The Success Mantra is a collection of time tested and proven principles, that I have attempted to summarise in this note, from some of my all time favourite books.

The following is a short brief on the 10 valuable Mantras of Success

1. Definiteness of Purpose

2. Mastering Self-Discipline

3. Positive Mental Attitude

4. Learning from Failure

5. Effective Communication

6. Building a Mastermind Group

7. Taking Action

8. Persistence and Determination

9. Continuous Learning and Growth

10. Giving Back and Serving Others

Applying these principles can help everyone unlock their true potential and achieve success in various facets of life.

1. Definiteness of Purpose:

The secret of success is constancy to purpose. – Benjamin Disraeli

Success begins with a clear and specific goal. Define your purpose and create a plan to achieve it. Without a definite purpose, you may drift aimlessly and struggle to find success.

2. Mastering Self-Discipline:

Discipline is Destiny. – Ryan Holiday

Self-discipline is crucial for success. Develop the ability to control your thoughts, emotions, and actions. By mastering self-discipline, you can stay focused, overcome obstacles, and persist in the face of challenges.

3. Positive Mental Attitude:

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow. – Helen Keller

Cultivate a positive mindset. Your thoughts and beliefs shape your reality. Maintain a positive mental attitude, visualize success, and eliminate negative self-talk. A positive mindset attracts opportunities and helps you overcome setbacks.

4. Learning from Failure:

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. – Thomas A. Edison

Failure is not permanent unless you allow it to be. Embrace failure as a learning opportunity and stepping stone to success. Analyze your failures, learn from them, and adjust your approach. Persistence and resilience are key to achieving your goals.

5. Effective Communication:

Communication – the human connection – is the key to personal and career success. – Paul J. Meyer

Develop strong communication skills. Learn to express yourself clearly, listen actively, and understand others. Effective communication builds relationships, inspires collaboration, and opens doors to new opportunities.

6. Building a Mastermind Group:

When a group of intelligent men work in the spirit of Harmony, they will provide much more thought energy than a that of one intelligent man. – Napoleon Hill

Surround yourself with like-minded individuals who support and challenge you. Create a mastermind group of individuals who share similar goals and values. Collaborate, exchange ideas, and leverage collective knowledge and resources.

7. Taking Action:

A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement – Bo Bennett

Success requires taking consistent and purposeful action. Avoid procrastination and indecision. Break down your goals into actionable steps and take immediate action. Progress comes from consistent effort and perseverance.

8. Persistence and Determination:

The most essential factor is persistence – the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come. – James Whitcomb Riley

Success rarely comes overnight. Develop persistence and determination to overcome obstacles and setbacks. Stay committed to your goals, even when faced with challenges. Success often comes to those who refuse to give up.

9. Continuous Learning and Growth:

Successful men, never stop acquiring specialized knowledge related to their major purpose, business, or profession. – Napoleon Hill

Commit to lifelong learning and personal growth. Acquire new knowledge, develop new skills, and stay updated with industry trends. Embrace a growth mindset and seek opportunities for self-improvement.

10. Giving Back and Serving Others:

When you’re in a position to have gotten so much, the gift at this point is giving back. – Paul Stanley

True success involves making a positive impact on others. Find ways to contribute to society and help others succeed. By serving others, you create a ripple effect of positivity and attract success into your own life.

Man’s Search For Meaning

“If you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how.”
– FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, writer, and Holocaust survivor. In 1942, just nine months after his marriage, Frankl and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. His father died there of starvation and pneumonia. In 1944, Frankl and the surviving members of his family were transported to Auschwitz, where his mother and brother were murdered in the gas chambers. His wife died later of typhus in Bergen-Belsen. Frankl spent three years in four concentration camps.
The author loses everything that he has when they bring him to the camp. Soldiers separate him from his wife, brother, sister and parents. For a long time, he didn’t even know if they were alive or not. Soldiers confiscated the scientific works he had been working on all his life and destroyed them.
After losing everything including his purpose of life, how can a man continue to live without losing hope?

Meaning of Life

“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.”
Viktor Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life’s meaning as the central human motivational force.
Meaning in life according to Frankl ; can be of three kinds.
  1. The first being a higher purpose or calling, something you feel you have been put on this earth to achieve.
  • The second is love, love for your partner, spouse, children, family, friends, and all those who matter.
  • The last is suffering. Suffering is an unavoidable part of human existence and it is upto man to find meaning in his own suffering.
These are the three ‘roots of meaning.’ that can bring hope and guide anyone through a difficult period in life.

1. Pursue a Life Task

“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.”
There would be a task that you and only you can complete. A piece of work that required your unique experiences, knowledge, and skills.

2. Love

“The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”
According to Frankl ‘Love’ has little to do with just the feeling of being in love and more about doing things to help others succeed. “Love” is the act of recognizing the potential in those who matter you you and supporting them actualize that potential. When you lack meaning, find someone you can elevate.

3. Suffer Bravely

“(By) accepting the challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end.”
You can use your imagination to overcome suffering. Take this incident (from Frankl’s experience)-
While walking in the cold while being beaten by a Nazi guard, he recalls a man whispering to him, “If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don’t know what is happening to us.” Instead of worrying about the man’s comment, this prompted Frankl to retreat into his imagination. He pictured his wife and her smile.
“Life is Now – The Meaning of Life is in this Moment.” – Jayesh Tekchandaney
Life is made up of many stories which are scripted in the Now. Life is like a movie; it’s ultimate meaning can only be known in its conclusion. But each still in the movie has an inherent meaning of its own. It is up to us to make each frame and still meaningful to the best of our ability.

Logotherapy

“When we are unable to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Logotherapy guides one to find their purpose and meaning in their lives. This meaning differs by individual and can change from hour to hour.
Meaning can be found in even the smallest of details. So, don’t spend all your waking hours searching for an all-encompassing meaning of life. Instead, search for meaning in everyday tasks and in the relationships you have with your friends and family.

Good Work Brings Goodwill & Growth, Greed Results in Disgrace & Downfall

This evening, while recovering from a flu, I happened to watch a business documentary, “Downfall – A Case Against Boeing”, on Netflix. It was on recommendation of a professional associate, Seshu, who suggested that I watch this documentary. We were discussing the documentary in the context of how Galaxy Surfactants, the company that Seshu has devoted his professional career to, and Unique Mixers, our company which has been my Karma Bhoomi (place of action) for the last 21 years, have grown keeping the organisational DNA – principles and practices intact for over 4 decades. And how, on the contrary, when organizations choose to deviate from their founding fundamentals, disaster strikes. The unforgettable business lesson that I learnt from watching the Netflix documentary is, “Good work brings goodwill and growth, greed results in disgrace and downfall.”

We have all known Boeing to be a world class company – the Gold Standard in aviation, and a company known for its engineering and manufacturing excellence. Yet, when a company choses to comprise on quality (which in the case of Boeing airplanes has a direct bearing on the safety), for the sake of business and profitability, slowly but eventually it results in descent, and undoing of all the good work done over many years, hurting the business reputation beyond repair. The following is a short narrative of the Boeing 737 Max case study, based on the Netflix documentary and some reading.

Boeing, once synonymous with engineering excellence and innovation, has seen a drastic decline in its reputation and safety standards over the years. The company’s downfall can be traced back to a significant merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, leading to a shift in priorities and the organisational culture from that of quality and safety, to cost-cutting and shareholder value.

When Boeing began to lose it’s market share to Airbus, they decided to go all out with the hurried launch of the 737 Max, to beat their French competitor’s Airbus A320 Neo aircraft. To win over, Boeing ditched the idea of developing a new passenger plane, which would take a decade. Instead, it decided to update its workhorse 737. The pace of the work on the 737 Max was frenetic. One former designer on the team working on flight controls for the Max said the group had at times produced 16 technical drawings a week, double the normal rate. A technician who assembles wiring on the Max said that in the first months of development, rushed designers were delivering sloppy blueprints to him. He was told that the instructions for the wiring would be cleaned up later in the process. An engineer who designed the 737 Max Cockpit said, “The company was trying to avoid costs and trying to contain the level of change. They wanted the minimum change to simplify the (pilot) training differences, minimum change to reduce costs, and to get it done quickly.”

After its announcement in 2011, the Boeing 737 Max took its maiden flight in January 2016. The most serious problem for Boeing was a design flaw in the 737 Max that led to two fatal crashes, one in October 2018 and one in March 2019, that killed a total of 346 people, and led to a 20-month grounding of the aircraft only after the second crash. Investigations revealed that both planes fell to the ground under similar circumstances; an incorrect sensor reading erroneously activated the aircrafts’ new flight control system called MCAS, forcing the planes into an uncontrollable nosedive. Further analysis concluded that the design and certification process of the 737 MAX 8 was rushed; pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers were inadequately trained in the operation of the new aircraft, and several incident reports leading up to the crashes were not thoroughly investigated.

However, immediately after the crashes, the Boeing management, which was in full knowledge of the compromises that they had made, concealed the facts from the authorities. Instead, Boeing issued a brief statement after each crash, saying it was “deeply saddened” by the loss of life and offered its “heartfelt sympathies to the families and loved ones” of the passengers and crews, while simultaneously defending the aircraft against any faults and suggesting the pilots had insufficient training, until rebutted by evidence.

One year after the crashes, lawmakers demanded answers from then Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg in a hearing on Capitol Hill. They questioned him about the discovered mistakes leading to the crashes and also about Boeing’s subsequent cover-up efforts. One important line of enquiry was how Boeing “tricked” regulators into approving sub-standard pilot training materials, especially the deletion of mentioning the critical flight stabilization system MCAS. A Texas court eventually ruled in October 2022 that the passengers killed in two 737 MAX crashes are legally considered “crime victims”, which has consequences concerning possible remedies. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor wrote, “Boeing’s crime may properly be considered the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history.” The Justice Department settlement included a fine of $243.6 million, compensation to airlines of $1.77 billion and a $500 million fund for crash victims.

If that wasn’t enough, as late as January 2024, the door plug of a commercial Boeing 737 Max 9 came off as the plane was climbing, opening a large hole on the side of the plane, alarming passengers onboard, and raising new questions about the aircraft.

Boeing’s downfall is a cautionary tale of how a once-proud company can lose its way when prioritizing profits over safety and abandoning its core principles. It will only be befitting to conclude on the same note as we started, “Good work brings goodwill and growth, greed results in disgrace and downfall.”

PS : I had the fortune of touring with my family, the Boeing factory in Seattle, USA, in May 2018 and I had then penned a note then about this fascinating experience (the link to this note is at the bottom of this article). I never imagined that 6 years later, I would be writing this note which takes away all the good memories that I once associated with Boeing.

Additional Links

Downfall – The Case Against Boeing
Visit to the Boeing Factory