Perspectives

Daily Reads:

Gurwinder: Overchoice & how to avoid it Some heuristics that I apply sub- or unconsciously and worth writing down in a conspicuous place.

SK Ventures: Embracing the Ourbouros as a new mental model of the technology stack infused with AI.

Giving myself permission to write even if no one ever reads it. https://werd.io/2023/spinning-a-tech-career-into-writing

QOTD:

“There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred pages are there. Only you don’t see them.”
– Elie Wiesel

Music:

George Clements covers Kathy’s Song

Daily Reads:

• Victor Frankl’s Method to Overcome Fear – Paradoxical Intention – sweating, public speaking. Fighting fear doesn’t work – simply adds pressure to the existing pressure. So how do we break this cycle?

  • "Hyper-intention" – excessive focus on achieving or preventing a particular outcome.
  • Paradox: statement seemingly contradictory, opposed to common sense.
  • Wish for the fear, rather than fight it, and you will conquer it. I want to get rid of fear vs I want to feel fear ironically gives you what you need to ignore the fear!
  • At the core is detachment, and using humor to laugh at ourselves.

• Identify one thing in your life that you take for granted, and ask how it got that way. We take for granted the physical world, especially the built world, but everything has a backstory! Rob Walker’s excellent newsletter asks "What’s the Question"

• Anne Kadet’s report from the Department of Personal Experimentation: One Thing at a Time, has this quote: It just makes sense that if I reduce my information intake by an hour or two everyday, my mind will quiet down faster. It’s got a lot less data to process!

• Museum employees exhibition of their own work – this is a fascinating idea!

• Roger Martin: Heuristics, Management, & Strategy You will often be told that you should use an algorithmic approach: crunch this data, this way, and it will tell you the answer. Be wary. Much of the business world is using algorithmic approaches that aren’t backed by the work necessary to push knowledge from heuristic to algorithm. You will be told that it will give you the ‘right answer,’ or ‘the truth.’ Audit them carefully to see whether that is hype or a valid promise.

QOTD:

The Daily Stoic quote from Marcus Aurelius, on the value of goodness and truth, made me giggle:

In short, the straightforward and good person should be like a smelly goat – you know when they are in the room with you

Music:

Isto covers Irving Berlin’s It’s a Lovely Day Today

Daily Reads:

Continuing re-reading the Art of Possibility.

Steve Blank’s been writing a riveting ‘secret’ history of Silicon Valley – here is Part V

Bob Ewing: The Stories we tell has some simple ideas on how to tell stories that propel us forward, rather than hold us back.

Listened to Seth Godin’s podcast Akimbo on psephology (the science of voting). I like his compelling call to action at the end of the episode – don’t leave a comment, tell someone about this!

• 7 Japanese techniques to overcome laziness on Instagram
  • Ikigai: having a purpose in life, the reason you wake up each morning. Do what you love. Do what you’re good at. Do what the world needs. Do what you can be paid for.
  • Kaizen: Focus on small improvements every day
  • Shoshin: Approach things with a beginner’s mindset. If your mind is empty, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind, there are few. – Shunryu Suzuki.
  • Hara Hachi Bu: Stop eating after you’re 80% full.
  • Shinrin-yoku: Forest bath, spend more time in nature. Reminds me of Oji’s comment in his podcast yetserday.
  • Wabi-sabi – Find beauty in imperfection.
  • Ganbaru: Be patient and do the best possible.

QOTD:

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
-Lin Yutang

Music:

Simon & Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair Canticle

Daily Reads:

How Coda runs effective multi-threaded meetings with a meeting template included.

Listened to Lenny’s podcast with Oji Udezue. The single biggest idea to take away for me from this 75min podcast is on finding the sharpest problem and solving it effectively. Customers love when it saves them time (3x is when they open up wallets says OU), and are a lot more forgiving of mistakes.

Ash Maurya: How to deliver an effective elevator pitch. The short version of this article is "When {customer} encounters a {job trigger}, they need to do {job} to achieve {desired outcome}. They would typically use {existing alternatives}, but because of {macro switching trigger}, these {existing alternatives} no longer work because of {these problems}. Left unaddressed, then {this is what is at stake.} So we built a solution that helps {customers} achieve {desired outcomes} by helping them {unique value proposition.}"

QOTD:

Hallux: A device for finding furniture in the dark.
More anatomically correct, the name for the the big toe.
– From Anu Garg’s AWAD newsletter today.

Music:

Kent Nishimura does a wonderful acoustic solo on guitar. Sara Smile Darryl Hall and John Oates

Daily Reads:

Arnold Kling: the trouble with booksis that they are too long. They have low information density. Instead of writing a book, write a Substack instead. That’s the premise of this Substack.

This HBR article makes a rather bold claim – You can radically change your organisation in one week. That’s less time than it gets to find time in an exec’s calendar in some of the organisations I’ve worked in!

Roger Martin: Who Should Do Strategy I’m beginning to see why Roger Martin ranks so high in my networks’ reading. Any line executive who abdicates responsibility for creating strategy to an external strategy consultant deserves to be removed. That person isn’t really an executive officer.

Seth Godin counters the advice on getting it right the first time with "Get it wrong the first time". Yep, that’s right – because NEVER does a masterpiece happen on the first try.

QOTD:

Ouch.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
– Stephen King, novelist

Music:

Caravania full album of their Gypsy Jazz Session, recorded in one take. Sensational!

Daily Reads:

Ben Evans Unbundling AI: You could ask Alexa anything, but it could only answer ten things. ChatGPT will answer anything, but can you use the answer? It depends on the question. Nearly a year on, the hysteria has died down a bit. What can it actually be used for? It’s a question with few answers beyond code, brainstorming ideas, and first drafts.

A thoughtful piece by Om Malik on Steve Jobs. What would SJ have thought of our Industry Now

I’m now learning Indifference on the guitar. I have learnt, at a much slower tempo of course, both Tico Tico & Montagne Saint Genevieve. Gypsy jazz, particularly as performed by Django Reinhardt is fascinating. Although he had fewer fingers, Django found a way to improvise using arpeggios, different time signatures and rests. His playing speed, the stretch of his finger muscles… so much amazement!

QOTD:

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
– Nasseem Nicholas Taleb

Music:

Toni Lindgren covers John Prine/ Blaze Foley’s classic Clay Pigeons

Daily Reads:

National Parks Service hilarious Insta post with words of inspirationconfusion

Events of the last week or so have permitted little time to read. I’m going to be claiming feedreader bankruptcy again this week. Doing it at the end of each week is also cathartic – I have not felt the obsessive need to ‘catch-up’ on reading online. The Art of Possibility, The Journals of Anais Nin, The Daily Stoic, Seneca’s "On the Shortness of Life" have all got a good workout.

QOTD:

It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.
– George H. Lorimer

Music:

Jordan Thomas covers Bob Dylan’s "Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright", performing on a 1943 Martin D-28 guitar.

Daily Reads:

I barely got any time to read today. Between phone calls and driving a young person to get urgent repair on a musical instrument, I’ve had neither the opportunity nor the energy to do it, besides these two quick ones.

Stop Mumbling 6 useful tips to stop mumbling. For a non-native English speaker like me, these are practical.

Jim Nielsen’s note about his Notes page made me happy.

QOTD:

You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.
-Ken Kesey, novelist

Music:

Violinist Csongor Korossy-Khayll & organist Xaver Varnus perform Schindler’s List in the largest synagogue in Budapest.

Daily Reads:

When no one was looking, he was at his best Marcus Aurelius explained.

Corporate Rebels The 8 Trends I wish they’d called it loose principles rather than trends of progressive teams and businesses.

Lenny Ratchisky has a wonderful podcast, and I love the way he engages with his guests. He also writes a Substack, with occasional guest authors, and this post by Ethan Evans, titled the Magic Loop, may be useful for someone looking to grow rapidly in their careers.

Lenny’s podcast episode with Bob Moesta on the Jobs To Be Done framework is without doubt a favourite. It’s a masterclass in discovery. Some gems I wrote down on my first pass, may make no sense until I explore this in more detail:

Nobody wants to change. So find out why people change. Therein lies the magic!
Unpeel the layers of language – pablum, fantasy, real-reasons. It takes a criminal investigator mindset to find out the real reasons.
When you arrive at the "edge of language" – where people can’t describe the moment of change, find contrasting and even incorrect ways of getting them to speak more.
What will people stop using when they start using your product?
There are no new jobs – how technology delivers the project

QOTD:

The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.
– Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th US president

Music:

This particular episode of Interpretations of Music Lessons for Life Masterclass was a tough one to watch. Ethan DePuy is a talented tenor, and clearly wants the world to know it, and to take him seriously. Yet, Zander shows him that he has a long way to go, and does it in a most beautiful way. He’s written about this episode in his Art of Possibility book too (pg 88) with some editorial changes I suppose.

Daily Reads:

Technically they were videos, rather than reads, but hey this is my blog 🙂

All these links were from going down the Tina Roth Eisenberg rabbit-hole. She calls herself an accidental businesswoman, and runs a bunch of companies that started as side projects. Swiss-Miss is her original blog, and is full of great links. Like me, she seems to be using it as a way to publicly share stuff she finds interesting. It was startling to see how many things we have in common – books, quotes, music, music sources, etc etc. A veritable gold-mine of insight from every one of her projects, starting with this 2013 Do lecture.

Trust Breeds Magic

Louis, the 90 year old gentleman on The Art of Letting Go was a heartwarming instagram video from

Carl Sagan on Books

Ever wondered what’s in a name? A school teacher explains 🙂

QOTD:

Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?
-Thomas Wolfe

Music:

Sinead O’Connor & Willie Nelson’s rendition of Don’t Give Up gives me the chills every time. Sinead’s angelic voice blends perfectly with old man Willie’s well worn story-telling voice.

Don’t give up
‘Cause you have friends
Don’t give up
You’re not beaten yet
Don’t give up
I know you can make it good