Category: Commentary

Some things are best done with an all or nothing mentality.  Management isn’t one of them.

Getting startup off the ground, picking and finishing a creative project, or being a solopreneur all benefit from either total engagement or total disengagement.  Black and white decisions made entirely by you or entirely by someone else.  It cuts through the crap and makes progress possible.

Management is different.  If you go all-in and do everything yourself or micromanage every decision, you’re limited to what’s in your personal capacity.  If you go all out and delegate with abandon, abdicate responsibility, and offer little guidance, lots of individual things get done faster, but not necessarily in the same direction, like ropes tugging at different angles.

This is a challenge.  My default settings are either do it myself, or hire someone to do it and not think about it again.  I can see it with my kids.  Sometimes they want help making eggs or building LEGO.  The subtle art of working with people, rather than working for them or having them work for you, takes patience and insight.  I can tell you how to make eggs easy enough.  I can make eggs easy enough.  But actively guiding from beginning to end, interjecting only lightly and when asked or needed, that’s tough.  It feels inefficient.  Couldn’t one of us be doing this?  Wouldn’t it be better to each do different things?  Aren’t two things at 90% better than one at 98%?

Not always.

As I mentioned yesterday, I prefer to play to strengths than shore up weaknesses.  The all or nothing mindset is a strength.  But it taps out pretty quickly beyond a certain scale.  It’s not so much about working on a weakness, it’s more about developing an entirely new skill called management.  It’s a skill nobody just has.  It can only be learned once you’re in a position where it’s needed to get you to the next level.  You have to reach your personal productivity ceiling.  Then you actually need to work with others.  It’s not about curbing the all or nothing mindset, just building a new one for new circumstances.

My brother once told me a CEO has only three priorities: Money, talent, and vision.  Money and vision are best served with an all or nothing approach.  Talent requires something totally different.

I’m not a fan of trying to improve weaknesses.

Not because I think they’re unimportant.  It’s just an ROI calculation.  A month spent getting from the bottom 5% to the bottom 7% proficiency at something I suck at is lower yield than a month spent getting from the top 92% to the top 92.5%.

When you’re really good at something, a tiny improvement gives a huge edge.  When you’re bad at something, even a sizable improvement doesn’t do much.

I apply this principle to others too.  I try to work with people’s existing strengths and push them to get even better there, and assume their weaknesses will never change.  If they do, bonus, but I’d rather create an incentive structure where nobody has to be different than they are to get results.

It generates faster progress and helps reduce frustration.  I’d never ask a really shy behind the scenes organized person to give a speech, so why ask an extroverted elocutionist to handle logistics?  Play to strengths, plan around weaknesses.

Still, weaknesses suck and sometimes I need to work on them to level up.  When I do, I focus on one at a time.  I build my daily routines so that most activities are building strengths, but I have one weakness in there too.  This helps keep me focused and pick the weakness that’s most glaring and costly.

The past several months, it’s talking.  I’m trying to talk less.  I talk too much in almost every setting.  Verbal communication is a strength, but overtalking dilutes it.  I’m not stopping any of my normal activities to work on this weakness.  I’m still putting 90% of my focus into building my strengths.  But it’s helped me become more aware of the cost of loquaciousness just by picking it as my one weakness to focus on right now.

I don’t think I’ve made progress yet.  It could be several years on this one.  Silence is my siren song.

I think everyone dramatically underestimates how deep and radical the change spurrred by the internet really is.  I think we’re still in the infant stages.  I think even now, it’s hard to see how profoundly it’s changing all facets of life, from experts and gatekeepers to the design of cities and governance and more.

Few things are more exciting to contemplate.

The only way to give of yourself is to have a self.

The only way to create value for others is to be valuable yourself.

The only way to not waste other people’s time is to not waste your own.

Do stuff for you.

I don’t like in-betweens. I prefer doing something all the way or doing nothing.

This presents a challenge when it comes to reading. If I read a few books in one genre, I get tired of it and don’t want to read that genre any more for a while. The downside is that I’ll start to crave a bit of it, but not enough to read a full book. I’m stuck between none at all, which leaves me hungry, and a full book, which leaves me bored.

I’m trying a new approach where I keep books I like handy and read a page or even just a paragraph at random when I need a little dose.  It’s very contrary to my nature, so we’ll see how it goes.

Billy Sibley was terrifying.

We all knew he had major heat, especially for a twelve year old.  We were a good team of base-hitters, but we hadn’t faced power on the mound yet.  Billy was known for speed, but inconsistent accuracy, especially early in the game.  The strategy was to hug the plate, shrink the strike zone, take walks, drop a few bunts, and hope for extra bases on the occasional wild pitch.

I was the lead-off hitter and, technically, I did my job in the first inning.  I got on base.  But on a deeper level, Billy won the opening at bat, and with it the entire game.  It started with four words just before the opening pitch.

“I’m gonna hit you.”

I did a double take as we passed each other to our respective dugouts after handshakes to be sure he actually said something so brazen and threatening.  He did.

I told my teammates about it while getting my bat and helmet.  Nobody knew if he was trash talking or prophesying.

It wasn’t a bluff.

I stepped into the box and the first pitch hit me square on the left cheek before I could back out.  I almost dropped, but managed to wobble to first base for my freebie.  That was about the closest to scoring we’d get.

The rest of the game, our plate-crowding strategy was abandoned on instinct.  We stood stiffly on the outer edge of the batter’s box and watched.  We might have gotten a few walks, maybe a even a few hits, I don’t remember.  What I do remember is the whole team being stunned into submission by an already scary guy who told the lead-off hitter he was going to hit him, then did on the first pitch.  Right in the face.  Hard.

Billy played to his greatest strength.  Not his fastball, but his reputation.  He was a small legend in the 10-12 year old league.  He knew we’d be nervous.  He knew his early stuff was unpredictable.  He knew we were a stingy small-ball team.  He kept his game plan simple: scare the shit out of them to expand the strike zone and own the game.

He didn’t need great stuff that night.  He only needed to do two things: tell me he’d hit me, and do it.

Sometimes winning the battle on the level of narrative is more important than winning on facts.

One thing done is better than ten things planned.

Yeah, if you’re building something bigger than daily survival, you’ll need to dream and plan.  But if you spend an entire day planning without doing or delivering anything, you’re going backwards while you plan your masterful forward attack.

Even if you plan 99% of the day, spend 1% of it doing something.  Finishing something.

That’s what I love about daily blogging.  Even on management/planning/ideas/analysis heavy days, if I literally move nothing from the “working on” to the “done” column, I will at least complete and publish one blog post.  Habituating and getting addicted to the feeling of done makes me better, regardless of what it is I’m doing.  Done spreads like a virus.

Get something done today.  Let the feeling infect you.

When I had a harder time controlling anger, or rather not being controlled by it, anger was the enemy.  I’ve gotten pretty good at not taking anything personally and redirecting anger into curiosity and dispassionate problem solving.

I don’t read the news, the comments section, or get into online debates.  I ignore politics and heated discussions with zealots in all arenas (except sports, where it’s pure play).  My life improved tenfold as I mastered the art of not getting riled up by the beliefs or actions of others, and looked for cause and effect instead of fair/unfair, right/wrong.

Now that I’ve tamed my fire, it’s become more valuable to selectively stoke it again.

TK Coleman and I do a session for Praxis opening seminars each month called. “Kicking Ass 101” where we share some top tips for success.  One of mine is “don’t take anything personally”, and one of TK’s is, “take everything personally”.  I don’t think they contradict when you know what we mean.  The first means choose to not be controlled by anger or a victim mindset.  The second means selectively choose to manufacturer a chip on your shoulder as motivation.  They work great in tandem.

I just got back from a car dealership to get a new lease on a car.  I’m letting every bit of hatred and rage for the corrupt government created hellhole that is the auto market well up in full force.  I’m cranking classic rock, fuming, and getting shit done.  Come at me.

I once had a conversation with professional poker star Annie Duke about the silliness of bans on betting.  She had an interesting definition of a game of luck vs. a game of skill.

While a lottery is clearly all luck, poker is skill (both people and math skills) and probability, with enough randomness that in any single game a skilled player can lose to a lucky novice.  What about betting on sports?  What about fantasy football?

Annie’s distinction between a game of luck and a game of skill was simple: if you can lose on purpose, it’s a game of skill.

Brilliant really.  If it’s all luck, you can’t control whether you win or lose.  You can’t purposely pick the wrong lottery number.  You can sort of kind of purposely bet on a horrible team, but it’s really out of your hands to ensure a loss.  You can’t 100% guarantee a loss on purpose, so it’s still a game of luck.  Fantasy football is an interesting hybrid, because like sports betting, the game play is out of your hands, but you can purposefully pack your roster with injured players and ensure defeat.

I don’t know why that definition stuck with me, but it always feels like there’s some wisdom in it.

There’s a newborn in the house again.  Newborns change the default time chunks that I use for assessment and action.  Normally, I think in weeks.  Days are shorter intervals that make up a week, and months are a handful of weeks, but the week is the primary reference unit.

During a particularly busy week, or a week of travel, days become the reference unit.  During phases of planning, months or quarters.

It’s been 455 hours since the baby was born.  Hours are the new base unit, and they will be until he’s on a regular sleep all night and two naps a day kind of schedule.  My whole life is lived in hour-long units now.  Everything slows down.  Each chunk of a few hours is experienced as if it were days.  Days feel like weeks.

It’s interesting how the default resets to sync with the kid.  For him, each hour is a large percentage of his entire life, so it’s sensible that to better care for him, his parents would start to think of and experience life in smaller units.

I’m always kind of in a rush to get out of this phase, where so many variables can change so quickly.  It’s tiring and bad for bigger picture thinking.  But it’s rare and special too.  I remember fondly, as if it was an entire epoch of my life, those small bundles of hours holding those small bundles of baby and rocking them, burping them, changing them, etc.

It’s interesting, too, how other parts of life and work are experienced differently when I’m in this hour-as-the-base-unit phase.  I feel a little more disconnected from all the normal people operating in days, weeks, or months.  But it’s also kind of philosophically curious.  It gives unique vantage point, like in a sci-fi movie when everyone else is in slow motion while the character walks around at normal speed and observes.  You see patterns you normally don’t.

This makes me wonder if I could experiment with deliberately changing my default time chunk, and what it would do.

An unknown sphere of influence helped bring down a Communist regime.  It’s the ultimate illustration of the often unseen power of your network.

In this episode of Forward Tilt (subscribe anywhere podcasts are found), I tell two stories about the power of a personal network and social capital.  One is a reminder that kindness to strangers might be more important than you think – you could be “entertaining angels”.  The other inspires me to keep creating everyday, because I never know the extent of the Remnant being reached.  (The latter is a story direct from FEE President Larry Reed.  Learn more about the story here.)

Yesterday, someone shared an article about all the bullshitters filling up the web.  It ripped on the kind of people who call themselves creativity coaches and keynote speakers and pump out advice articles and inspiring Steve Jobs quotes on social media, but have never actually built anything.

It was a fun little bit of cathartic sass.

It was also missing something: any chance of reducing the amount of bullshit in the world.

The article was basically, “Bullshitters exist, here’s what they are, they are idiots and should stop bullshitting.”  Commenters said things like, “Yeah, too bad they’ll never read this and listen.”  But why would they?

It reminded me of attitudes you sometimes here about entrepreneurs in illegal drugs.  “Drug dealers are terrible people and should stop ruining the world.”  Maybe it feels good to say, but it’s totally useless because it misses two key components necessary to generate change.

From where does demand derive?

It’s easy to tell self-help peddlers and drug pushers to stop selling.  But why can they in the first place?  If their stuff is so bad, who keeps buying it?

Like it or not, there is demand for both crack and fluffy creativity crap.  Even if you persuade one dealer to step dealing, another will fill the void as long as demand exists.

The article didn’t discuss the followers and consumers of bullshit.  It just suggested the people meeting the demand should stop doing it.  Why?  It’s clearly valuable to someone.  Wouldn’t it be more effective to tell the users they’d be better off not consuming it, but doing something else instead?

Placing all the blame on suppliers ignores the demand that makes them not only possible, but in the long run, inevitable.

What’s in it for me?

The article made no direct appeal to self-interest.  It was a condemnation of bullshiters and that’s about it.  But if you’re making a living or having fun re-sharing paraphrased quotes about people who built things, why would you want to stop just because some online author said you’re a phony?  What do you lose for stopping, and what do you gain?  Everything and nothing, respectively.

A more effective way to change behavior is to refrain from telling the target how bad they are, and instead tell them (or better yet show them) how much more effective they could be if they did things differently.  What are the downsides and unseen costs of building a “tribe” around fluffy secondhand bullshit?  What other ways could the benefits be better captured?  How might an aspiring “thought leader” build something first, or create rules for what kind of content they’ll share?

Put them both together…

Better yet, combine attention to the demand side with focus on self-interest.  Show the consumers of bullshit how it’s hindering progress toward their goals.  Demonstrate the dangers and present an alternative.  There’s a reason people consume this stuff.  Show them how to meet the need in better ways, just as you might help an addict channel their compulsive behaviors into something less damaging.

I actually liked the article.  It was fun, punchy, and described a real phenomenon that I roll my eyes at often.  Still, it’s too easy to assume idiocy instead of rational self-interest, and to demonize suppliers rather than understand demand and create alternatives.

If the world is awash in bullshit, introduce beauty.

Yesterday, my always interesting friend Chris Nelson mentioned a local public works project that struck him as useless.  As we chatted, it struck me how often we give very old things more praise than they are due.

Think of public works projects and boondoggles.  You can probably think of several off the top of your head.  The bridge to nowhere in Alaska, the Big Dig in Boston, Auto World in Flint, ugly windmills dotting southern Ohio, and basically every government project ever in the city of Detroit come to mind.

Give it a few hundred years, and I wouldn’t be surprised if archaeologists and historians treat the crumbled remains of these hideous resource-wasters as brilliant and important stepping stones for humanity.  If you go only by the plaques adorning them and official ceremonies surrounding them, you could conclude nothing else.

Maybe it wouldn’t be as easy to do this now, with so much access to contemporary opinions and information about these dumb projects, but it’s very easy to do with the past.

Watch any documentary about old castles or great tyrant-led serf-funded projects of bygone eras and you might conclude that every cathedral, bridge, wall, and tower was a picture of beauty, ingenuity, and efficiency.  What if many of these remains were the ancient or medieval equivalent of the Motor City’s useless People Mover?  How much graft and architectural error went into these projects?

Knowing what we know about humans, and especially the nature and incentives of force-funded centralized prestige projects, no doubt many of the cherished monuments of the past were big dumb symbols of fatally conceited rulers.  We get to see the remains of buildings, but what we can’t see – and what Frederic Bastiat reminds us we must look for – are all the things that didn’t get built or accomplished because of these massive boondoggles.

All projects are not created equal, all castles are not examples of government waste (many were private endeavors), and perhaps those that survive longest do because they were the most valuable and well-constructed.  Still, we’d do well to take a dose of rational choice realism with our romantic forays into past architecture.

Just as it is naive to assume every practice and belief of the past was dumb superstition, it’s naive to assume every ruin was a brilliant and valuable construction.  It’d be fun to see (and maybe one exists, I don’t pretend to be a history buff) a project that documents great boondoggles through the ages, tallying budget overages, deadlines missed, waste, graft, obsolescence, and idiocy.

If the Great Men approach to history is dangerously simplistic (and it is), so too is the Great Works approach.

If I could choose to be the most knowledgeable person in the world or the most curious, I’d choose the latter without hesitation.

Every interesting thing I’ve done has been a direct result of curiosity.  Every professional success has stemmed from the fact that I was curious about more than just my role, but every facet of the organization and everyone else’s job, story, process, and motivations.

Curiosity spurs action, knowledge kills it

A burning question drives a relentless pursuit.  A heap of facts cultivates cautious analysis.  I would have never attempted to launch Praxis if I had more knowledge at the start.  Knowing what I know now wouldn’t have been an advantage, but a roadblock.  Instead, I was driven by a question, “What if you could get young people from where they are to a career they love for zero cost in a year or less?  What would that look like?”  I had to find the answer, and the market was the only reliable source.  I had no choice but to build this thing.

This is a common story.  Nearly every entrepreneur will tell you that their early ignorance of the road ahead, coupled with insatiable curiosity, was a more powerful force than a mass of market knowledge.

If knowledge drove innovation, startups would be primarily founded by very old and very knowledgeable intellectuals.  Instead, academics are usually the most risk-averse, inaction-biased people on the planet.  They know too much (or at least they think they do).

Don’t lose the questions.  Don’t lose the curiosity.  Even after pursuit of it rewards you with knowledge.  Never be so knowledgeable that you lose naive optimism that new discoveries are around the corner.

Knowledge is cheap, curiosity is priceless

Google has made factual knowledge all but useless.  Remember when you had to call your music obsessed friend to settle a fight over what year a song debuted?  Knowledge has never been less valuable, which in turn has made penetrating curiosity and ability to ask the best questions more valuable than ever.

But it’s not just about the internet.  Knowledge has always been less valuable than curiosity.  Henry Ford didn’t know how to do almost any specific operation in his business, but he could let his questions drive him to find those who could.  Einstein was famously ignorant several of basic facts, because he wanted to free his mind up for the higher level work of questioning and imagining.

Cultivate curiosity

Doubtless some people are born more curious than others.  But curiosity can be cultivated.

School tries very hard to kill it; in fact, it is designed expressly for that purpose.  Determine what questions are fair game, make kids answer them with threat of punishment, treat all other explorations as wasteful, distracting, or disobedient.  Reward recitation of previously answered questions and shut down new ones.

Formal education won’t do it for you.  You’re going to have to become curious yourself.  Deschool your mind, then begin to ask questions.

Curious games

I play simple games, like trying to calculate how much money a coffee shop is making during the hour I’m sitting there.  Try it.  You’ll soon start wondering how much they’re paying for rent and wages and supplies, and how much profit they’ll pull in (or loss).  Next, you’ll begin to wonder how long they can stick around at this estimated pace.  Before you know it, you’ll have dreamed up the next three most likely businesses to fill the vacated real-estate when the coffee shop flops.

The curious employee > the knowledgeable one

I’ve hired curious people and I’ve hired knowledgeable people.  The latter are generally less fun to work with and have a much lower ceiling, even if they can do their specific task well.  The former are a font of delightful surprises.  They make me better because they ask questions I hadn’t thought of.  They excite me, because every waking hour I know that not only are they doing their job, they are exploring and probing and chasing their curiosity all kinds of places and will bring back cool new ideas that benefit the company.

Even abstract questions that seem at first to have no connection to your daily work will make you better and more valuable. I stumbled upon Rational Choice Theory via myriad rabbit trails started due to my curiosity about how wealth is created, and it’s made me far better at management, product design, sales, and marketing.

Don’t overthink learning

Learning new things is far easier and can be done much faster than everyone thinks.  Possessed by a fit of wild curiosity, a person can learn at breakneck speed.  Possessed of a desire for the prestige or safety that comes with certified knowledge, learning is slow and painful, and the rewards full of stagnant, predictable mediocrity.  Explosive growth is spurred by curiosity, not knowledge.

Be interested.  Be curious.

I have a Pandora station built around epic move soundtracks and songs that make me feel like I’m fighting a dragon with a flaming sword.

It works every time.

If I’m a little stale or dull or tired of the same old podcasts or in a work rut, I go for a walk, pop in the headphones, and let Hans Zimmer, Michael Giachinno, or Ennio Morricone pull my body out of the suburbs and into the epic tale of my life, seen from 30,000 feet.

Few things have the same power to remind me why I do things, and inspire me to push through the crap.

There’s a reason stories have been the most effective medium of communication since man’s beginning.  Music that conjures and teases out your story in your mind’s eye is a powerful tool.

This isn’t a blog post, it’s a last ditch volley of flaming arrows to signal the coming charge into destiny.