This is a sort of nerdy way to frame the career launch process, but now that I’ve heard other people using the terminology, I’m excited to be able to do it too with less fear of being too hard to understand!

The career launch game is not what you think it is. It’s not a numbers game. It’s not a credentials game. It’s a proof of work game.

Here’s a post where I tell you to get in the new game!

The Golden State Warriors are one of the greatest teams in the history of the NBA.

They just gave up an NBA record 31 point second half lead at home in the first round of the playoffs to the eighth seeded Clippers.

Losing a game to an inferior opponent is not a surprise. Golden State’s kind of dominance means they get lax sometimes and give up a game or two in a series where they’re heavily favored. But giving up that kind of lead is insane. They got caught in the gimme trap.

Blowing open a 31 point lead when you’re the better team means game over. Just play around and run out the clock with your bench. You can smile, relax, celebrate, and take the win for granted.

The danger isn’t even so much slipping into the chill mindset. The danger is it’s almost impossible to come back out of it mid-game. Knowing you once had a 31 point lead makes you reinterpret a 15 point lead as bigger than it is when the gap starts to close. Then it’s down to ten, but no big deal. You hit another shot and feel fine. Then single digits. Then two possessions. Then one. By this time, it’s undeniable that you can’t take the game for granted, but it’s too late to flip from victory lap to vicious because now fear has entered. You play tight. Embarrassment looms. You have no upside to winning now – it would still be a little embarrassing it got so close – only downside to losing. Your opponent is loose, freewheeling, all upside.

The Warriors got caught in the trap. Bad.

So now what?

It’s possible this embarrassment is good for them. If they use it. Nothing snaps you into playoff hunger mode like getting walloped.

But it doesn’t always work out this way. It depends how a team responds mentally to the loss.

If you treat it as no big deal, you’re in a dangerous spot. Then again, if you treat it as a really big deal, you are too. The former could mean you’re blinded by pride and still lacking hunger and respect for the game necessary to win. The latter could mean you cede mental territory to your underdog opponent and show that they shook you. You don’t want to be relaxed, and you don’t want to be afraid.

That’s a hard line to straddle. Harder the more successful you are. Overconfidence in your ability to win without trying or fear of losing what you have are impossible to avoid once you’ve achieved greatness. But you can’t indulge them for long. Success is a great reward but a bad teacher.

Will the Warriors once again find that spot between fear and pride? Can they muster the seriousness, learn the lesson, and come back with no desperation or relaxation?

All games are mental games. And while casual fans may find dominant dynasties boring, they are the most interesting thing in sports to me. The mentality needed to stay successful is rarer and harder than what’s needed to get there. Heavily favored teams have to level up their mindset and deal with the demons of success and expectation.

I can’t wait to watch.

I was talking to a friend this morning who was in a bad place. He’d forgotten to do some work over the weekend, and he wondered how to handle the inevitable let down when his supervisor found out.

He asked what he should do. I asked what his options were.

He said there were two. He could try to fake that he’d done the work and do a terrible job on his deliverables. Or he could preemptively fess up, say sorry, and ask how best to make it up this week.

I said option two sounded like it had a higher probability of limiting the damage than option one.

He responded with a series of ‘What ifs’. He was imagining all the bad things that might happen. I said okay, what about option one? Same what ifs.

I asked him if he could control what the supervisor did in response to whatever approach he chose. He said no. I said, “Then forget the what ifs. They are irrelevant. They’ll happen regardless. Focus on what you can control and pick the course of action with the highest probability for the least painful outcome. Then stop thinking about it.”

He felt paralyzed by the what ifs. Stressing over eventualities he couldn’t control froze his decision making process. He was going to default to option one, not because he thought it was better, but because he never had time to think clearly and choose due to all the worry about what might happen two steps down the road.

Kill the what ifs. Take the step in front of you based on the best evidence you have. See what happens. Take in the feedback. Adjust. Choose the next step.

That’s it. It really is that simple. But it’s hard. We worry a lot about many things out of our control, or only potentially in our control in the future based on a series of responses out of our control.

If you want less stress, think about fewer things. But think about them well.

I’ve never been a big fan of vacations. I enjoy seeing new places and having fun experiences outside the daily routine, but I’ve never much enjoyed the whole not working part. I’d rather bring my laptop and do some work while experiencing new things.

But I’ve started to enjoy the vacation concept more, except in fragments. Rather than a vacation from everything, I’m trying out mini vacations. Pick one thing to take a vacation from for a day or a week and do it.

It’s a great way to learn more about what role various activities play in my life too. A vacation from social media, or reading, or alarm clocks reveal stuff about my current habits and lifestyle that I may not know just from thinking about it.

Just found this in a Dropbox folder from a few years ago. I gave myself a challenge to write a song every day for 30 days. Day one I tried to get things warmed up and shake the rust. I ended up referencing a bunch of intellectual influences in verse. Definitely needs some work, but it was a fun change of pace and I was able to hammer it out in only a few minutes.

The way I write, I must embrace,
And face. The fact. That I’m. A hack.
Ready rhyme and predictable pace
It’s in. My blood. I can’t. Go back.
So sappy ballads with screaming pipes,
Here I come to shout some tripe
To crash some trash with blasting words
Slap the bass like I’m the worst
Spit the verse
Break the curse
No writer’s block, it doesn’t exist
Resistance is a bitch through which to persist
So Robert Fritz the shits out of this
And Press the Field to find self two,
The self who, Koestler says I create through
Eureka’s leaking from the words I’m speaking
Tap the Source, be the Source, doesn’t really matter
Just bust the verse through the ‘verse mind over matter
Flatter, to control
Flatter is the death
Flatter is the vision
Of only height and breadth
No depth in that, gotta ascend from the flat
Land in two dimensions, now three, now four
How many more limited only by perception
Depth without direction, no arrow of time
But timeless rhyme can unwind on a dime
What’s wound up and found in
The cream of the mind
Over matter, minefield of the battle
Only suckers see victory
Remnants see infinity
Games, not sums
Fun, not zero
Self, not hero
Burn while Nero
Loses his mind, corrupted by power
Absolutely, Acton in action,
Acting astutely
Self-interest directed, with bad incentive
Not self-interested deflected,
Don’t neglect this, protect this
Wherever the self is
Freedom is found where spirit meets ground
Patterns emerge where freedom is spurred
Only belief can resist the thief
In the night he comes, but I’m ready
“Oh, it’s just you?” I’m steady
Six rings make the greatest, so I best get busy
I’m only getting started, day one, I’m not dizzy
No knockout punch for me, but resistance
On the run, on its ass,
Never said it would be fun, just said it would be done
So here it is, there it is, now I did it
Day one.

I read a lot of job postings. Most of them suck. No wonder talented young people don’t fall over themselves to apply.

I’m endlessly fascinated by just about every business I encounter. The model, the strategy, the supply chain, the customer acquisition process, etc. I have a hard time understanding people who aren’t fascinated by it. Especially when they work there. Especially especially when their job involves recruiting others to work there.

Most job descriptions are functional and boring. They use tons of insider jargon, and rarely talk about what the company does for customers and why and how it creates value and how the role is a part of that. “The Sales Operations Assistant reports to the blah blah, and engages in strategic market research and lead generation activities to assist the Sales Team as well as cross-organizational processes involving the CRM and marketing automation platform.” Kill me.

Those things are all actually really cool! But an outsider doesn’t know that. What gets me is it’s written like even the insider doesn’t know it’s cool or what purpose it serves or why that purpose it awesome.

And you can’t fake it. Some postings realize the problem I’m describing, and so they try to connect to the ‘why’ of the company and show the softer, mission driven side. It comes off like a motivational poster. Trying too hard. “At Acme Corp, we care about our people, our clients, and the broader community impacted by our logistics support software. It’s about making the world a better place.” It’s like some focus-group wrote it under the influence of an HR conference called “Empathy and You: Beyond the Bottom Line.” Ugh.

But if you really, truly love your company it will come through. If you find it fascinating, it will come through. If you get excited about getting more awesome people to come see how cool your work is and be a part of it, it will come through. They will want to. It’s infectious.

What if a posting were more like, “This is a pretty awesome role. We’ve got all these business owners out there struggling to organize the products they sell. So we made a super awesome, easy tool that keeps track of it all so they don’t have to. The problem is, most of these business owners don’t know about it! So our sales team reaches out to let them know and see if we can help. They do a lot of calls and meetings to show them the software. But they need help staying organized too! This role is all about going through lists of businesses who might love our product, researching them, and figuring out which are the best fit, then helping the sales team find the best way to contact them. There’s a lot more, and you’ll learn it quickly when you join!”

Of course in a real company you could do much better. But I’m already excited about this role just thinking about it at this imaginary company!

If you want employees who love the company, start loving it more yourself.

I talk to so many young people who cannot think clearly about life decisions.

Most of the time, it’s because they have too little money involved.

I don’t really want to go to college, but maybe I have to?

I’m not sure if I should take this job because it might not be my passion?

Do I really want to move to a new city?

Those questions get a lot clearer when mom and dad aren’t paying tuition, paying for your car and cell phone, or providing a rent-free living space.

College is the easiest and most extreme example. Ask a young person who’s tepid on the idea of attending and they’ll torture themselves trying to work through the pros and cons. Then say, “It will cost you $50,000. You’ve got to come up with that on your own.” All of the sudden, it looks like a ridiculously stupid deal. Because it is.

College savings accounts from mom and dad blind young people to the truth of their situation. Something everyone else says is important, and it’s “free”, becomes too hard to turn down, even though you know it’s not going to move you closer to your goals.

The more skin in the game young people have the sooner, the better they’ll get at self-knowledge, analysis, risk-taking, and decision making.

Say you’ve got a super high-level, complex, high-stakes, high-tech problem.

Few people in the world have the know-how to understand what you’re working on, let alone the ability to solve the problem stumping you.

You’re running out of time. You’re running out of money.

Throw in the towel?

Bring in the ferret.

I came across this story about scientists building a massive particle accelerator. It kept breaking due to tiny metal shavings inside, but they didn’t know a way to get them out cheaply and quickly. Until someone got the idea to send a ferret through. It worked.

Someone could probably turn this tiny tale (pun very much intended) into an entire business book — The Polecat Problem Methodology — which would be nauseating and stupid.

I won’t bore you belaboring lessons to be drawn from this. It’s a fun story that opens the mind to unconventional ideas, and blurs the line between precision expertise and junkyard tinkering. Apply it as you will.

No ferrets were harmed in the production of this post.

It would be interesting, though very difficult, to study how history changes.

I don’t mean how the sequence of human events changes from the present into the future, I mean how the past changes. Since it exists only in memory from our present perspective, the stories we believe about the past are the past. But those stories aren’t fixed. They change all the time.

I’ve seen some books and studies that look at a few historical events and document the ways in which history textbooks dealt with them in, say, the 1950s vs today. The changes are often dramatic, but presented in a deadpan Orwellian fashion as if it has always been this way, nevermind what we used to say.

And it is of course true that history is mostly written by those on reasonably favorable terms with the dominant political powers. When those change, histories also change.

Imagine if the German army had won World War II, or the Soviet Union had won a nuclear showdown with the United States. Do you think the dominant historical narrative would be the same? Not only would the telling of those conflicts be different, but the story of all previous history would be different. There is little reason to believe our current historical story is any less biased.

And in most cases, you can’t easily go to the evidence to prove which version is true. Evidence is scant. Most of history, especially ancient history, is based on one or two fragments or artifacts that get translated by one or two people who then get referenced by others who get referenced. If you wanted to find out whether a particular ancient figure was real, you might find the best you could get was someone who wrote a story about them, and it’s unclear whether the story was intended as fiction. There is no harder evidence for many things in history.

This does not make history a scandal or conspiracy, but it ought to cause humility. It needn’t cause paranoia about being lied to. In fact, I find it thrilling. It means the world is full of so much more mystery than we assume if we simply accept dominant narratives as provably true.

It is useful to think probabilistically about history (and everything else). If you experience something firsthand, you can be certain it happened. If a trusted friend relays a story, you might be slightly less certain. By the time you’re hearing fifteenth-hand someone referencing an nineteenth century scholar’s belief about when the Sumerians built the Ziggurats based on one type of textual analysis, the probability is it totally accurate should be a lot lower.

In Orwell’s dystopia, history gets changed by the politically powerful at moments notice by changing the official story. While I do think it’s easier than most of us assume to change the dominant historical narrative, it takes a lot more than changing some government documents or publicly funded textbooks. Academics and professional historians are the easier part. Artists and novelists are the more important part.

When you think about the American West, or Ancient Egypt, or Medieval Europe, you have a lot of ideas that are pretty coherent and consistent with other people’s ideas about these things. While most are not contradicted by history books, they didn’t originate there. It’s not the source material that causes us to believe historical narratives as much as it is the fictional narratives built on top of it. Even though we know A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is a fictional narrative (built on top of another at least mostly fictional narrative of Arthur), the historical setting becomes a little more real in our brain every time a fictional story uses it as a backdrop.

A handful of movies like Jurassic Park that portray dinosaurs as predecessors to birds probably do more to make that part of the historical narrative than whatever studies or researchers they are referencing.

On the one hand, the power of art and fiction to shape our beliefs about the past is a bit troubling. I takes very little evidence from very few sources for a bunch of stories to spin up and make us believe things with higher probability than warranted, simply because it is repeated in so many stories on top of stories.

On the other hand, it’s cause for comfort. It’s empowering. I means an Orwellian regime is going to have a harder time controlling the past. Sure, they can handle the subsidy-sucking professoratti, but to control the narratives of all the artists and story-tellers? A Herculean task. In fact, the inability to control rebel creatives has brought down many a dictatorship.

History is not a fixed thing. Our knowledge is so slim. This makes probabalistic thinking important. It makes the stories we tell important. It makes the lenses through which we view the past important.

History has a history. The way it’s presented today might not be better than it once was or could be. It’s useful to think about ways it might better be told and understood.

(Bonus: Here’s a great video on ways of seeing the past.)

I’m the one who was never big enough, fast enough, strong enough.

I’m driven by proving the perpetual big brother voice wrong. Being doubted, disbelieved, and disrespected drives me. Fighting to survive and surprise as an underdog. Then one day you land a blow. You win a game of one on one. After years of trash talk and dismissal, you do it. And guess what? You get no credit. No acknowledgement. It’s downplayed. Forgotten by everyone but you. You’re still the little brother.

Par for the course. Bring it. I love to be underestimated. I love to fight the world and win.

That’s the story that weaves through the back of my mind as I go about building my life. And it’s the story that’s working for me today.

My actual big brother is a good dude. He’s probably my biggest supporter. This is not a story about true and false facts. It’s a story about my identity in the universe. I am the little brother with something to prove. I always will be, no matter how much I prove. I choose to embrace it and be empowered by it. I will surprise all comers with the fight in me. I’m used to taking shots and getting back up.

The older I get, the more I think my primary foe is fatigue.

I’m just tired a lot. Four kids and a business require lots of energy. The most common thing I fight against is feeling tired. Mentally and physically.

This makes bursts of energy really valuable. I’ve learned to ride the highs to productive stuff as much as possible. If I wake up at 4:30am for no explainable reason and don’t feel tired, ride it. If I have a late night burst, or mid-morning weekend surge, ride it. Whenever, for however long it lasts.

Sleep is more valuable than ever, and so is total focus and energy. So I try to squeeze the most out of both.

The pacing or tempo of action is as important as the action itself.

This is something I’ve only recently learned. I’m pathologically action biased. I am quick to start and I move fast to finish. Then I move on quickly to the next thing. I don’t think much about timing or plan much beyond the next action.

This serves me well often. It’s a big part of what I’ve accomplished so far. But the further I go and the more complex the goals and challenges, the more valuable it is to deliberately set up pacing.

When an idea comes, rather than act first, I’m finding a better sequence. I walk on it. Then write it out. Then sleep on it. A whole day before even talking about it let alone starting would’ve seemed insane not long ago. Now it’s necessary. After I sleep on it, I re-write it, bullet point it, then talk it through with one or two people. After that, tighten it up a bit more, walk on it, then talk to everyone involved and plan the attack.

This rhythm from idea to action requires a reworking of my internal clock and pressure system. It would’ve killed me once. Now I’m using it as a baseline and adding more chunks of time into the sequence for some actions.

Once acclimated, it doesn’t actually slow the time to completion, and in bigger tasks involving more people, speeds it up. The hardest part is sitting on insight or inspiration and letting it work on me for a bit before I work on it.

There’s a lot of knowledge inside a human. Most of it isn’t readily accessible with the conscious mind. It takes some work to access.

You have physical knowledge. The ability to ride a bike. You can’t explain what’s happening in great detail, and you don’t even need to pay attention to it. You’ve got to go really deep to access the knowledge of what your body knows without you knowing.

You also know what will make you feel at peace. You know what you should do. But you don’t know that you know it. Somewhere, that knowledge exists, but it takes deep thinking, counsel, or other practices to unearth.

Most problems you face have solutions, and most of the time you know them. The real problem is accessing the knowledge you already have.

This is a weird fact. It raises a lot of questions about the nature of reality, biology, and the theory of mind. That’s all worth pursuing. But wherever that leads, I’ve still got to live day to day. While I’m trying to understand reality I have to experience it. And whatever it means, it’s undeniable that I know more stuff than I know, and accessing that knowledge is key to progress.

For me it’s easier to do something every single day than to do it “frequently”.

That’s why I blog daily. I’m not disciplined or sophisticated enough to write consistently and less frequently at the same time. I like the accountability of daily delivery. I’ve got to hit publish no matter what.

That’s it. I don’t worry about topic, length, or quality. Those vary. Good stuff comes out sometimes. But that’s not a requirement. Showing up is.

So I’m posting this from a park bench on my phone. Can’t ever tell me I failed to ship.

It doesn’t have to suck. There’s nothing about medicines and treatments and diagnosis and surgery that needs to suck by nature. It’s pretty awesome stuff.

But the quality of the experience is almost always awful.

The majority of doctors don’t do anything at all. They look at a chart that shows the weights and measurements the nurses took and a few notes on what the patient said. They ask you the same questions again. Maybe they shine a light in your eyes. Then they go away for the same amount of time it takes a cop to write you a ticket – somewhere in that twenty-five to forever minutes range – come back and tell you to buy some pills they looked up on their computer. Two or three redundant ones to be “safe”. They don’t mention side effects. They don’t know anything about them. You ask them what’s in the pills and they don’t really know. The waiter at a local restaurant knows more about what’s in the stuff they sell you than doctors know about what they prescribe. None of this is helpful because you already looked up your symptoms and figured out what pills you wanted on your own. But you couldn’t buy them without the doctor’s royal imprimatur.

That’s about it. That’s what most doctors do most of the time and most of them do that badly.

Of course there are some awesome docs. And there are some awesome advanced procedures and research in medicine. But those are rare. Most of the medical industry is a giant school-like cinder block monstrosity filled with unaccountable government protected rule followers.

The solution is simple, and one that existed long before the modern medical establishment. Get government out of medicine altogether. Start with removing government from medical certification and license. The license laws were implemented with the express intent to restrict the number of doctors and make medical care less accessible and more expensive. Medical costs were too low and insurance was too accessible for the tastes of those who had control over government. So they “fixed” it.

Any time you restrict the supply of labor and make government hoops the only legal way to offer services, you get higher prices and lower quality. From taxi medallions to medical licenses, it’s the same principle at work. Those willing to jump through the hoops get an automatic guaranteed customer base because supply has been so restricted. And licensing is sold to the public as a viable quality control, which of course it isn’t. It’s competition control, and competition is the greatest quality control of all. Protecting low quality providers from competition is a danger to the public. Monopolized medical licensing is a danger to the public.

Insurance requirements and restrictions, subsidies, the FDA, and many more egregious government interventions exacerbate the problem. Most were touted as solutions to the problem originally created by government, and all only make it worse.

It’s a terrible, low-quality, sub-human experience most of the time. Barring big crisis interventions and surgeries which can be life-saving, most treatment is a crappy soup of mediocrity and blind paternalism. Nobody knows what the hell is going on and nobody realizes how much better it could and should be.

So what’s the most likely unexpected angle of innovation and competition? Nobody saw ride-share apps coming and upending taxi cartels. What will upend the medical cartels?

Thinking about it gets me excited.