Intelak’s mentor, Gustavo Carriconde, shares with us his views on evaluating situations using mental models and extracting a better outcome in the process.
Gustavo is a first-officer pilot at Emirates Airlines, founder of his Podcast – Resumocast and is currently building his own accelerator program, startupspace.io
Below is the edited excerpt from his interview with us:
I have worked with many entrepreneurs in the region and I help them to be more productive by finding what they really want in their journey and help them achieve their dreams. I’m also very fortunate to be a Pilot so I can bring some experience from my training as a pilot to the entrepreneurship environment.
Decisions are very important for pilots because the outcome of the flight is directly connected to the quality of decisions the pilots make. So we train a lot about how to understand the moments where decisions are made. Our situation awareness about what is happening around us is sometime limited. And in times of distress or emergencies, we tend to visit our decision making models where we adhere to what’s in our checklist for that particular situation. So we just follow the checklist including some memorised content to help us deal with the emergency situation. And as soon as the emergency situation is over we can revert back to the second type of decision model which is the one when we have more time available.
As pilots, we tend to make decisions based on the current and forthcoming situations to help better predict the outcome.
Q: You speak about ‘mental models’, what is it, and how can it attribute to an entrepreneur’s success in decision making?
Mental models are actually two types of habits that you program for yourself. A mental model is an explanation of someone’s thought process about how something works in the real world. For instance when you wake up in the morning. You know your go-to activities.
I wake up really early and I have a checklist. I have a mental model because I don’t want to have to decide a few minutes before I leave home, if I forgot to perform an important activity. So I know exactly what time I wake up, what I’m going to read before I leave home and so on.
Sharing my personal morning ritual, I start with two glass of water when I wake up because we dehydrate during the night. That’s a very good trick. I then go brush my my teeth and then usually read at least 20 to 30 pages, all this could take 30-40mins. I plan the night before what I’m going to read that I plan the night before.
Remember when you woke up as a kid during summer holidays, you were always excited to go do the things you loved most, because you had anticipated and planned for it. So I try to imbibe that feeling everyday, by planning my key activities the night before.
That’s something related relate to what I’d like to do. So a lot makes me energised me and makes me a really good start of the day. And then then I do five minutes of meditation less concentration I don’t think if I can follow meditation and then I get a breath like your breath Yeah. Bethlehem someone tried to clear my mind I’m thinking about anything and then what I do.
Q: Why do you think entrepreneurs struggle making decisions of value?
I think it starts with having a lack of information about the issue they’re tackling. People should talk to other people exposing their ideas to others and not keep their ideas just to themselves. Go out and try to see if somebody has had that problem before. Chances are, you may find someones who’s fought through it with their way of thinking. But most times I see, entrepreneurs try to decide without having sufficient data or information. So sometimes its a great idea to just stop once in a while, clear your mind and rethink the process of achieving that task.
Q: Tell us about a situation where you used meditation to help solve the problem you were having.
I host a podcast, which is quite successful in its vertical, I remember the time when my co-founder left and I was wondering if I should shut it down. I took my time to make that decision & I let go of the feelings that would rush me to make that decision. Through meditation or let’s call it peace of mind, I was able to delete the moment which would perhaps end in an undesired outcome. Today, we still continue to host the podcast successfully, its called Resumocast.
Right from the start, your business must have a purpose and your purpose must also be your personal purpose of pushing that business towards success. If you have that motive solidified as your foundation from the beginning, you as an entrepreneur will find yourself in the right direction to make better decisions.
