Month: December 2024

One way to view work is to frame it as a multiplayer game. Every year, we work our way up to the next level.

The difficulty goes up as we make our way up these levels – linearly at first, then exponentially.

As a result, we never ever feel completely comfortable. Just as we get comfortable in one level, it is time for the next one. We just have to embrace that constant discomfort – it is where learning and growth happens.

That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun while we’re at it. We have fun when three things happen.

First, we need to pick the right game. It starts here.

Next, we need to learn to fall in love with that process of learning and growth.

And finally, we need to find the right crew to play with.

If all three of these are in place in the game we’re playing, best to savor it… and make it count.

There’s a great story from Google X’s Astro Teller about a maxim they use.

Let’s say you’re trying to teach a monkey how to recite Shakespeare while on a pedestal. How should you allocate your time and money between training the monkey and building the pedestal?

The right answer, of course, is to spend zero time thinking about the pedestal. But I bet at least a couple of people will rush off and start building a really great pedestal first. Why? Because at some point the boss is going to pop by and ask for a status update — and you want to be able to show off something other than a long list of reasons why teaching a monkey to talk is really, really hard.

Tackle the monkey first is a beautiful way of visualizing the idea of testing the riskiest assumptions first.

Tackle the monkey first.

“Happiness is our quality of life – envy. “ | Jimmy Carr

This made me chuckle… and think.

One of the truths in life is that we’re better off always assuming two things at once – we’ve made it and not made it.

Assuming we’ve made it means we don’t worry about having to prove something to someone all the time. We show up ready to take swings we believe in, be plainspoken and say what we think, and back ourselves to learn from the many inevitable mistakes we make. It gives rise to the confidence that enables us to say – this might not work, and that’s okay.

Assuming we’ve not made it on the other hand reminds us that we cannot rest on our laurels. At any given point, it is how we perform at the project at hand and the next one ahead of us that matters. That’s how we guard against any sense of complacency – the day we stop looking around corners and anticipating where things might go wrong is the day we sow the seeds for dysfunction in the future. We’re never “set” – there’s always work to be done.

These sound like contradictory ideas. But the opposite of a good idea is often a good idea. And accepting and embracing these contradictory ideas helps us make progress.

A small operating principle I’ve picked up over 2024 is to explicitly check if we’re at a decision point before debating a discussion.

The reason for this check is that it is easy to speculate and waste time discussing something that doesn’t need to be decided. Worse, it is easy to waste time worrying about something that doesn’t need to be the object of worry. And worse still, it can be tempting to spend time mitigating a problem that isn’t real yet.

There is no point optimizing something that shouldn’t have been done in the first place.

Make it a habit to check for decision points. They’re a massive time saver.

I’ve been going for a run nearly most weekday mornings over the past year (thanks to Peter Attia). When I started doing these runs around this time last year, it was winter and the thought of stepping out at near freezing temperatures wasn’t appetizing.

But, of course, every time I did it, I came back feeling great.

So, over time, every time the resistance within asked the question – “Do you really want to step out in the cold?”, I ignored my current self and made the decision as my future self.

It is a simple way to get over the resistance – make more decisions as our future selves. In time, these repeated decisions will become worthwhile habits that our future selves will be grateful for.

Over the summer, we had the ridiculous good fortune to visit four National Parks in Tanzania and Kenya. As a mega fan of all things David Attenborough and nature shows, this was a dream come true.

Tarangire National Park was the first National parks we visited. At 1100 sq. miles/2800 sq kilometers, it is comparable to the size of Yosemite national park or twice the size of a London or Los Angeles. There’s a lot to say about these parks. I thought I’d share a collection of my favorite photos instead.

The park is memorable thanks to its amazing population of Baobab trees. They are instantly recognizable to those who’ve watched The Lion King as Rafiki’s home.

We went during the winter – even with no leaves, these trees captured my heart. They stand out in the landscape. Their massive circumference lends them a special majesty.

Here’s a BaoBab with a giraffe eating near it (for scale).

That’s “Zazu” for the Lion King fans.

A gorgeous long crested eagle..

Here was a young Simba after a Zebra meal.

Tarangire is famous for its elephant herds. Understandably so. These tuskers have impressive tusks.

A couple of friends on my team gave me an earful when I shared that I planned to go on this trip camera-less. I am so grateful for that earful. All of these (and more) were from just a day at Tarangire National Park.

(More from the “Our World is Awesome” series: Grand Teton NP, Yellowstone NP, Grand Canyon NP, Lauterbrunnen Valley)

One of the many changes inspired by Casey Means’ Good Energy is to optimize for 10,000 steps every day. A simple tactic to achieve this on days I go to work is to park far away from the building where I work.

Funnily, prior to optimizing for more steps, I used to feel a shred of annoyance when I didn’t find a parking spot right next to the building where I worked.

I now willingly opt in to taking the scenic route instead.

Same outcome, different emotions.

A good reminder that so much just depends on what we’re optimizing for.

Seth shared a post yesterday that struck a chord. Sharing in full.

In most competitive markets, when an organization offers a new benefit, others will quickly move to match it.

This means that it’s hard to justify the hard work of creating something better, because it’s just going to become a new standard. It doesn’t pay for a credit card company to invest in customer service, the thinking goes, because that won’t pay for itself, it’ll just raise costs for the leader and for all of its competitors. That’s how the race to the bottom begins.

Perhaps it pays to simply focus on being better at making a profit, or being better at getting new customers, or being better at making the stock price go up. These proxies push short-term thinking and aren’t resilient.

What truly changes the game is when an organization decides to commit to being better at being better.

That’s hard to do and difficult to compete against.

Thanks Seth.

There’s a lovely passage from Finnish photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen in Oliver Burkeman’s “Four Thousand Weeks.” He is describing the Helsinki bus station to students of photography.

“There are two dozen platforms there, he explains, with several different bus lines departing from each one—and for the first part of its journey, each bus leaving from any given platform takes the same route through the city as all the others, making identical stops.

Think of each stop as representing one year of your career, Minkkinen advises photography students. You pick an artistic direction—perhaps you start working on platinum studies of nudes—and you begin to accumulate a portfolio of work. Three years (or bus stops) later, you proudly present it to the owner of a gallery. But you’re dismayed to be told that your pictures aren’t as original as you thought, because they look like knockoffs of the work of the photographer Irving Penn; Penn’s bus, it turns out, had been on the same route as yours.

Annoyed at yourself for having wasted three years following somebody else’s path, you jump off that bus, hail a taxi, and return to where you started at the bus station. This time, you board a different bus, choosing a different genre of photography in which to specialize. But a few stops later, the same thing happens: you’re informed that your new body of work seems derivative, too. Back you go to the bus station.

But the pattern keeps on repeating: nothing you produce ever gets recognized as being truly your own.

What’s the solution?

“It’s simple,” Minkkinen says. “Stay on the bus. Stay on the fucking bus.”

A little farther out on their journeys through the city, Helsinki’s bus routes diverge, plunging off to unique destinations as they head through the suburbs and into the countryside beyond. That’s where the distinctive work begins. But it begins at all only for those who can muster the patience to immerse themselves in the earlier stage—the trial-and-error phase of copying others, learning new skills, and accumulating experience.”

“Stay on the fucking bus” indeed.

H/T: Sasha’s blog for reminding me about this story