Month: October 2022

A neat story emerged recently about Manchester United coach Erik Ten Hag. After a defeat in the first game, the team lost their second game in embarrassing fashion to Brentford (a relatively small team).

Brentford outfought United every step of the way. It also emerged that they collectively ran 13.8 kilometers more.

Ten Hag canceled the next day off for the team. Their punishment on the day? A 13.8 kilometer run on what turned out to be a hot day. The symbolism is beautiful.

But that’s not all. It turned out Ten Hag ran the entire 13.8 kms with the players himself.

And why wouldn’t he? He was in it with them after all.

A great leadership story.

I was attempting to put one of those stick-on number plate holders in front of our car a while back.

After spending a few seconds optimizing the alignment, I stuck it on. However, just as I did so, my hands tilted left. The number plate holder wasn’t perfectly horizontal as a result – there was a slight angle.

I stared at it realizing I had a choice to make. I could spend an hour or some money attempting to straighten it. Or I could let it go and just move on.

I chose the latter.

A few months later, I can confirm that I don’t notice the number plate holder or think about its imperfect angle since*.

Pick what you want to optimize. Let the rest go.

Works with number plate holders.

And life.

*When I did notice it today, I found myself appreciating the lesson the process of choosing not to fix the imperfection taught me. :-)

The college graduation ceremony is considered the moment a student stops being a student.

I think that sort of thinking is akin to expecting wisdom to accompany age.

In reality, graduation happens when a person (a) is a productive contributor to society and (b) stops competing with/comparing their lives with their cohort.

Many never graduate.

It is amazing how much unproductive friction we can remove from our lives by giving up the need to have the last word.

I was setting up delivery on some furniture recently and saw something neat. As I scrolled through possible delivery windows, I saw discounts and extra charges based on the choice.

For example, choosing Saturday morning would cost $40 while choosing Wednesday morning would result in -$40 (i.e., a discount of $40).

If you are the furniture delivery company, you are likely looking at a default state demand curve that spikes on weekends. That means frenetic weekends at higher labor costs. And, worse, this is after trucks you own sit idle on other days.

This simple optimization enables them to smoothen that curve and better utilize their assets while making customers willing to choose non-peak hour delivery times much happier.

Win-win-win.

“Careful the wish you make. For wishes come true.” | Into the Woods (movie)

“Into the Woods” is a movie dedicated to a simple idea – be careful what you wish for. It reminded me of the story I shared a few days back about the blind woman who got her sight back.

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Dr. Dan Goodman once performed surgery on a middle-aged woman whose cataract had left her blind since childhood. The cataract was removed, leaving the woman with near-perfect vision. A miraculous success.

The patient returned for a checkup a few weeks later. The book Crashing Through writes:

Her reaction startled Goodman. She had been happy and content as a blind person. Now sighted, she became anxious and depressed. She told him that she had spent her adult life on welfare and had never worked, married, or ventured far from home – a small existence to which she had become comfortably accustomed. Now, however, government officials told her that she no longer qualified for disability, and they expected her to get a job. Society wanted her to function normally. It was, she told Goldman, too much to handle.

Every goal you dream about has a downside that’s easy to overlook.

Indeed.

“Opportunity is nearing. It just won’t feel like an opportunity when we get there.” | Steve Blumenthal on investment opportunities as valuations continue to compress in today’s bear market.

It is an idea that is applicable well beyond investment opportunities.

I realized one of the tires on our car was running out of pressure quickly. After some testing, it became clear there was a problem. And it turned out today that the problem was a nail.

All of this involved some hassle in the past few days – realizing there was a problem, testing, getting it sorted, etc.

Not a lot of hassle. But definitely some inconvenience.

And yet there was nothing I could do about it. I have no idea where it happened. It just did. Random chance. No retrospective required or needed.

I think this is analogous to other situations we face in our work and in our lives. From time to time, we find ourselves facing the equivalent of a nail in the tire. There isn’t much we could have to prevent it. Sometimes, the solution to such a situation is straightforward. Sometimes, it isn’t. Sometimes, it is a cheap fix. And in other times, it is expensive.

All we can do is build some spare capacity to deal with problems like this as they arise.

Because they will.

I often say – only partly in jest – that Kung Fu Panda is one of the wisest movies of all time. One of my favorite exchanges in the first movie is when Po, the panda, talks to his adopted father, Mr. Ping, about the secret ingredient in his famous secret ingredient soup.

Mr. Ping : The secret ingredient is… nothing!

Po : Huh?

Mr. Ping : You heard me. Nothing! There is no secret ingredient.

Po : Wait, wait… it’s just plain old noodle soup? You don’t add some kind of special sauce or something?

Mr. Ping : Don’t have to. To make something special you just have to believe it’s special.

Of course, belief alone isn’t going to get the job done. But, as with Po, if you’ve put in the work, belief makes all the difference.

In the past millennia, we’ve seen many exponential technology transitions. These transitions have, in simple terms, dramatically changed life on the planet.

The creation of the wheel and our ability to spark and then control fire were among the earliest exponential transitions. There have been so many such transitions over time – in domains that have helped us get from place to place (shipping, cars, air travel, and so on), get healthier (farming, vaccines, public health advancements), and harness energy better (steam engine, fossil fuels). In aggregate, they’ve created incredible amounts of wealth and, wait for it, exponentially better living conditions for humans all over the world.

I’ve observed two trends in our history. The first is that the interval between transitions has gotten smaller and smaller. The last hundred years arguably saw more transitions than the previous thousand and so on. The second is that our reaction to new technology is nearly always woeful.

Not novel technology. Just new technology.

When cars were first introduced in Britain, the law required a person to walk in front of it waving a red flag. Ignaz Semmelweiss was sent to a mental asylum for suggest that maternal mortality could be reduced by washing hands.

We aren’t rational creatures. So this resistance to messy transitions is understandable. It doesn’t make it easy though.

But it also means we’re in for an eventful next decade as I think we’re living through a unique moment with three exponential transitions happening simultaneously –

(1) Artificial intelligence is going to remake every industry in the next decade. Recent breakthroughs in our ability to run massive models at lower and lower costs change the game for all of us. AI was already connecting significant numbers of people to information, opportunity, and life partners than ever before – i.e., it is already a fundamental layer in our lives. But I think we’re just getting started.

(2) Renewable energy is going to change how we live as a species. Every new source by the end of the next decade will likely be solar, wind, or some other form of renewable energy (fusion? hydrogen?) that hasn’t been invented yet. Our ability to generate, store, and harness this energy at a scale that was unimaginable just two decades ago is going to change the game for humanity.

(3) RNA-powered therapies and vaccines are going to remake our species. The breakthrough work on CRISPR and mRNA vaccines in the past decade or so are just the tip of the iceberg. They’re going to change how we deal with ailments and diseases and will change what it means to be human.

Exponential transitions are challenging because we don’t just get to make the switch immediately. Transitions take time and face the resistance from the status quo. They don’t happen easily.

Every exponential transition also brings significant trade-offs. Ultrasound technology was used to save many a baby. Sadly, it was also used for large scale female infanticide. All of these discussions will be messy by definition. But it is worth keeping a close eye on each of these as it relates to your work and life.

As I wrote this, I realized there are many other contenders (metaverse, crypto, etc.) – but I’ve found my conviction on these 3 growing over the past years. Excited to write a lot more about each of these as I learn more.

It is a fascinating time to be alive.