The Great Mental Models, Volume One – Shane Parrish

The Great Mental Models, Volume One – by Shane Parrish (Farnam Street)
Date read: 1/28/20. Recommendation: 9/10.

Aside from being the most beautifully designed book that I’ve picked up in years, the content is equally rich. Volume One presents nine foundational mental models and general thinking concepts. The book champions a multidisciplinary approach to help broaden your perspective and make better decisions. Parrish emphasizes that these mental models help us overcome three main barriers to effective decision making—not having the right vantage point, ego-induced denial, and distance from the consequences of our decisions. The concepts discussed range from first principles and inversion to Occam’s Razor and Hanlon’s Razor. If you enjoyed the free ebook that I wrote on strategy, you will enjoy this one—it shares a similar philosophy and further builds upon many of those ideas.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Volume one presents the first nine models, general thinking concepts. Goal is to improve your understanding of the world, improve your ability to see things through different lenses, and improve the quality of your decisions by improving your rationality. 

Multidisciplinary approach:
“Not having the ability to shift perspective by applying knowledge from multiple disciplines makes us vulnerable….Multidisciplinary thinking, learning these mental models and applying them across our lives, creates less stress and more freedom.” 

Three shortcomings:

1. Not having the right perspective. We have a hard time seeing any system we are in.

2. Ego-induced denial. Too much invested in our opinions or ourselves to see the world’s feedback. “We optimize for short-term ego protection over long-term happiness.” It’s hard not to stay with what’s easy. 

3. Distance from the consequences of decisions. Also tend to undervalue elementary ideas and overvalue the complicated ones.

Perspective:
“The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem.” Alain de Botton

Simplicity:
“Most geniuses—especially those who lead others—prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities.” Andy Benoit

“Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.”

“Focusing on simplicity when all others are focused on complexity is a hallmark of a genius.”

Occam’s Razor:
Simpler explanations are more likely to be true than complicated ones. “Instead of wasting your time trying to disprove complex scenarios, you can make decisions more confidently by basing them on the explanation that has the fewest moving parts.” 

Avoid unnecessary complexity. Commit to the simplest explanation. Easier to falsify, easier to understand, and more likely to be correct. If one explanation requires the interaction of three variables and the other requires thirty, which is more likely to be in error?

Principles:
“As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.” Harrington Emerson

Antifragility:
Put yourself in a position benefit from serendipity and randomness. Seek out situations that offer upside optionality—good odds of offering us opportunities. 

Never take risks that will do you in completely. Develop resilience to learn from failures and start again. “Those who are not afraid to fail (properly) have a huge advantage over the rest.” 

Hanlon’s Razor:
Don’t attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity. 

Remember, people make mistakes. The world isn’t always out to get you.

Always assuming malice puts you at the center of everyone else’s world. You’re the only person who thinks about you as much as you do. Don’t prioritize malice over stupidity unless you’re seeking paranoia. 

The Most Important Thing – Howard Marks

The Most Important Thing Illuminated – by Howard Marks
Date read: 1/19/20. Recommendation: 9/10.

One of the most important books you can read on investing. Marks details his investment philosophy through an accessible discussion of the market environment, cycles, investor psychology, and what factors contribute to success (or lack thereof) in this space. While the book focuses on investing, many of the lessons and principles outlined apply to life in general. It could double as a modern philosophy book. Marks digs into second-level thinking, contrarianism, patience, uncertainty, and risk. If you appreciate the Warren Buffett/Charlie Munger school of thought, this book will hit home.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

“A philosophy has to be the sum of many ideas accumulated over a long period of time from various sources. One cannot develop an effective philosophy without having been exposed to life’s lessons.” HM

“Experience is what you got when you didn’t get what you wanted.” HM

Second-level thinking:
First-level thinking is simplistic and superficial, and just about everyone can do it. Second-level thinking is deep, complex and convoluted.

First test of an appealing investment idea should be, “And who doesn’t know that?” Second-level thinkers depend on inefficiency. The market (and humans) are prone to mistakes that can be taken advantage of. 

Value investing:
“There’s no such thing as a good or bad idea regardless of price!” HM

“Since buying from a forced seller is the best thing in our world, being a forced seller is the worst. That means it’s essential to arrange your affairs so you’ll be able to hold on—and not sell—at the worst of times. This requires both long-term capital and strong psychological resources.” HM

Good assets and good buys are two different things. Good buys are investment opportunities where price is low relative to value and potential return is high relative to risk.

“A high price both increases risk and lowers turn.” Christopher Davis

Market cycles:
Understanding that cycles are eventually self-correcting is one way to maintain some optimism when bargain hunting after large market drops.” Joel Greenblatt

Most dangerous premise that’s proven wrong every time: “this time it’s different.” Opportunity for profit for anyone who understands the past and knows it repeats.

“Ignoring cycles and extrapolating trends is one of the most dangerous things an investor can do.” HM

Don’t reach for returns (requires high risk and exception skill): “You simply cannot create investment opportunities when they’re not there.” Instead, buy when others are forced to sell. 

Investment markets follow a pendulum-like swing:
-between euphoria and depression
-between celebrating positive developments and obsessing over negatives, and thus
-between overpriced and underpriced

Investor psychology spends more time at extremes than it does at a midpoint.

Unknowns…
-How far the pendulum will swing in its arc
-What might cause the swing to stop and turn back
-When this reversal will occur
-How far it will then swing in the opposite direction

Three stages of a bull market:
-The first, when a few forward-looking people begin to believe things will get better
-The second, when most investor realize improvement is actually taking place
-The third, when everyone concludes things will get better forever

Three stages of a bear market:
-The first, when just a few thoughtful investors recognize that, despite the prevailing bullishness, things won’t always be rosy
-The second, when most investors recognize things are deteriorating
-The third, when everyone’s convinced things can only get worse

Negative influences:
“The gravest market losses have their genesis in psychological errors, not analytical miscues.” HM

“In the long run, the market gets it right. But you have to survive over the short run, to get to the long run.” Joel Greenblatt

“Never forget the six-foot-tall man who drowned crossing the steam that was five feet deep on average. Margin for error gives you staying power and gets you through the low spots.” HM

Contrarianism: “It’s certainly undesirable to be part of the herd when it stampedes off the cliff, but it takes rare skill, insight, and discipline to avoid to it.” HM

Be skeptical of what everyone else is saying or doing.

“The best opportunities are usually found among things most others won’t do.” HM

Uncertainty:
“We have two classes of forecasters: Those who don’t know—and those who don’t know they don’t know.” John Kenneth Galbraith

“It’s frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what’s going on.” Amos Tversky

“It’s more important to ensure survival under negative outcomes than it is to guarantee maximum returns under favorable ones.” HM

The thoughtful investor: 
Healthy respect for risk, awareness that we don’t know what the future holds, an understanding that the best we can do is view the future as a probability distribution and invest accordingly, insistence on defensive investing, and emphasis on avoiding pitfalls.

“When there’s nothing particularly clever to do, the potential pitfall lies in insisting on being clever.” HM

“Investment expectations must be reasonable. Anything else will get you into trouble.” HM

The First 90 Days – Michael D. Watkins

The First 90 Days – by Michael D. Watkins
Date read: 1/10/20. Recommendation: 8/10.

This is a great resource for anyone starting a new job (or after a recent promotion) who wants to accelerate the time required to get up to speed and begin contributing to their new team. I just started a new job and this has proved invaluable. At my last company, I noticed there were a few people hired around the same time as me who were particularly good at this. I knew I wanted to improve upon this before my next leap and this book helped me do just that. Watkins offers multidimensional strategies to help ease transitions, reach the break-even point faster, secure early wins, build credibility, and negotiate success.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Break-even:
The goal in every transition is to reach the break-even point as fast as possible—the place where you contributions start to match your consumption.

Traps:
Sticking with what you know—you’ll need to embrace new skills and ways of thinking.

Too action oriented—don’t be too busy to learn, don’t attempt to do too much, don’t come in thinking you have the answer. 

Only learning one dimension—usually this is the technical part of the business, but cultural and political dimensions deserve equal attention. Without these it’s impossible to understand what’s really going on. 

Effective transitions:
Prepare yourself, take a mental break from your old job.

Accelerate your learning, be systematic and focused about what you need to learn and how you will learn it most efficiently.

Secure early wins, in first 90 days find a way to create value and improve business results.

Negotiate success, gain consensus with new boss on 90-day plan.

Four pillars of onboarding (page 34):
-Business orientation

-Identify and connect with key stakeholders

-Expectations alignment (performance management, working styles).

-Cultural adaptation (learn to speak like the locals, understand how people get support for important initiatives, how they win recognition for accomplishments, how they view meetings).

Start with these five questions:

1. What are the biggest challenges the organization is facing (or will face in the near future)?

2. Why is the organization facing (or going to face) these challenges?

3. What are the most promising unexploited opportunities for growth?

4. What would need to happen for the organization to exploit the potential of these opportunities?

5. If you were me, what would you focus your attention on?

Pay attention to how people answer these questions. What language do they use, who answers directly, who has a broad view, who seems stuck in a silo?

Negotiate success:
Engage with your boss to shape the game so you have a fighting chance of achieving your goals. Establish realistic expectations, reach consensus, secure sufficient resources.

What are my priorities—culture, impact on product, hiring, learning?

What does your boss care about most? What are their priorities and goals and how do your actions fit into this picture?

Don’t stay away…if your boss is distant, take ownership and make the relationship work. Get on their calendar regularly. Adapt to your boss’s style. 

Focus on five areas in initial conversations with new boss:
Situational diagnosis—How did we reach this point? What factors make this situation a challenge? Which are within our control? What resources should I look to?

Expectations—What do I need to do in short term? Medium term? What does success look like? How will performance be measured?

Resources—Ask for things that you need to be successful.

Style—What forms of communication do they prefer? 

Personal development—have this conversation a few months down the line.

Build credibility:
Your credibility will depend on how people answer these questions about you…

Do you have the insight and steadiness to make tough decisions?

Do you have values that they relate to, admire, and want to emulate?

Do you have the right kind of energy?

Do you demand high levels of performance from yourself and others?

The Art of Gathering – Priya Parker

The Art of Gathering – by Priya Parker
Date read: 12/14/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

At a glance, this looks like a book for event planners. But it’s more focused on the larger questions of how we meet and why it matters. It’s about being more purposeful in the ways we spend our time together. As someone who is completely inept and ignorant to the nuance of successful gatherings, this book was particularly insightful. While the most obvious benefit is helping you to coordinate more meaningful gatherings of friends and family, one of the less obvious benefits is in your work life. In product management, I’m gathering groups of people to reflect upon and solve challenging problems on a weekly basis in the form of design sprints, calibrations, standups, all hands, leadership updates, retrospectives, etc. The better I’m able to be at making sure this time is meaningful, the more engaged and committed the team will be. Parker gives great insight into how to make this happen.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Be purposeful:
The first step to bringing together people in a meaningful way is committing to a bold, sharp purpose.

“When you skip asking yourself what the purpose of your birthday party is in this specific year, for where you are at this present moment in your life, for example, you forsake an opportunity for your gathering to be a source of growth, support, guidance, and inspiration tailored to the time in which you and others find yourself.” PP

Ask yourself why and make sure it’s meaningful. 

Birthday party…
Bad: To celebrate my birthday
Okay: To mark the year
Good: To surround myself with the people who bring out the best in me. 

“Don’t be a chill host.” Be deliberate in your choices. 

Refuse to be everything:
Your reason for gathering should take a stand, it can’t be everything for everyone. The best gatherings are willing to alienate some and ruffle a few feathers. The worst gatherings are sterile and safe.

Specificity matters in gatherings.

For example, the purpose of your wedding might be a ceremonial repayment to your parents. This will lead you to invite a totally different guest list that’s more catered to their needs. Whereas a wedding with the intent of molding a new couple with their tribe that they care about most will look totally different. 

Use thoughtful exclusion: Over-inclusion signifies a confusion as to why you’re gathering. In attempting not to offend anyone, you compromise the entire gathering. 

Everyone on a guest list should help fulfill the purpose of your gathering. 

Environment:
Venues come with scripts—the environment should serve the purpose.

A venue can and should do one thing at the best gatherings…displace people. “Displacement is about breaking people out of their habits. It is about waking people up from the slumber of their own routines.” PP

Environmental design also matters. Make it easier for people to be inclusive and do the right thing. “Does open seating at a teachers conference help the three newcomers who end up sitting clumped together at the end of the table every time?” 

Pregame:
90% of what makes a gathering successful is put in place beforehand. It doesn’t just happen.

The bigger the ask of your guests (travel, etc.), the more care, attention, and detail should be put into the pregame. You should begin to cultivate/prime the behaviors you want to see at the beginning. Try sending an article, a heartfelt note, or asking guests to participate in a discussion beforehand. 

The spirit and expectations guests show up with sets the tone for the entire event.

Toasts Examples:
Priya was tasked with creating an intimate dinner at a networking event. Purpose was to get people to share authentically and connect. So instead of simply introducing the theme of a “good life,” they asked guests to give a toast about what a good life meant to them. The catch was that they had to start their toasts with a personal story or experience from their own life. And to make sure everyone was eager to participate, they would make the last person sing their toast. It would help set a good pace for the evening. Also, could not mention specific names if someone in your story was in the room (as to not alienate the group). 

The key is to get people speaking in stories and experiences, not in abstract ideas.

At a family dinner with both sides of her family she tried a twist on the toast example above. Wanted it to be special so asked family members to share a story, moment, or experience for their life that changed the way they viewed the world. And most importantly, it had to be a story that no one else there knew. 

Vulnerability:
Being vulnerable is the key to getting an audience to buy in and identify with you. 

It’s always better to be authentic and nervous that shallow and overly rehearsed. 

“A moment a story works is usually a moment of vulnerability.” George Dawes Green

Goal is to get people to reveal their real selves, not their best selves. To help facilitate this you can acknowledge people’s strengths up front. Relieves pressure that people feel to flex during an event. “You’re all here because you’re remarkable…we don’t want to hear about your resume or how great you are. We already know that.”

Facilitators set the depth of the group through the initial story they volunteer.

Ask or think about…
“What do you need to feel safe here?”
“What do you need from this group to be willing to take a risk in this conversation today?”

Keep Going – Austin Kleon

Keep Going – by Austin Kleon
Date read: 12/3/19. Recommendation: 9/10.

If you haven’t read any of his work before, Kleon’s stuff is great. It’s bite-sized inspiration for creativity and perseverance. You can get through the book in less than an hour. I dig into his books after a lull when I need to reengage myself with a creative jolt. The ideas that resonated strongest with me in this book were the importance of disconnecting, lowering the stakes, and creative reflection. To observe, you have to immerse yourself in the world. But being creative is also about retreating and tuning out the noise so you’re able to figure out what you’re trying to say. Kleon also suggests we think about our art as making gifts for people (à la John Greene), in the sense that the goal is to reach and connect with a single person. That’s what will keep you going.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Disconnect for Creativity:
“You must retreat from the world long enough to think, practice your art, and bring forth something worth sharing with others.” AK

“It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how to best say it, without getting the hell out of it again.” Tim Kreider

“The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes of all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning, we cannot begin to see. Unless we see, we cannot think.” Thomas Merton

“Keep your eye on your inner world and keep away from ads and idiots and movie stars.” Dorothea Tanning

“The phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key elements of discovery: loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom. Those have always been where creative ideas come from.” Lynda Barry

Lower the Stakes:
“The great artists are able to retain this sense of playfulness throughout their careers. Art and the artists both suffer most when the artist gets too heavy, too focused on results.” AK

This is similar to Derek Sivers idea of making your art your main relaxing activity. 

Make gifts for people: “Don’t make stuff because you want to make money—it will never make you enough money. And don’t make stuff because you want to get famous—because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people—and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that people will notice and like the gifts.” John Greene

Focus your attention on reaching and connecting with one person. This is the ultimate goal.

Do things that make you and the people around you come alive. If your art is making you and those around you miserable, stop. “The world doesn’t necessarily need more great artists. It needs more decent human beings.” AK

Reflection:
If you’re trying to determine what you’ve been trying to say, read through your old journals or work. Distill the themes. This will give you insight into what you’re trying to say and what you should do next. 

Creativity has seasons. You’re not a robot. Allow yourself to live and embrace the influences of each season.

Mindset – Carol Dweck

Mindset – by Carol Dweck
Date read: 11/25/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

This is a foundational book that I wish I would have read in college or at the start of my career. Dweck’s lessons in cultivating a growth mindset can be heard in passing on dozens of podcasts and seen referenced in countless other books. But this is the source. As she discusses a fixed vs. growth mindset, the biggest difference is revealed not when things are going well but when coping with failure. In a fixed mindset, failure is any type of setback. In a growth mindset, failure is not growing. A growth mindset is about building resilience and belief in change. Your skills and abilities can be developed. This allows you to embrace and enjoy the process that is learning, rather than seeking immediate gratification or giving up. The earlier you’re able to read this, the better it will help shift your outlook. But there’s something for those at every walk of life—Dweck discusses how these concepts apply in parenting, business, school, and relationships.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Growth Mindset:
“The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of a growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.” CD

Growth mindset allows you to convert life’s setbacks into future successes.

By cultivating a growth mindset you can begin building perseverance and resilience.

“The growth mindset is based on the belief in change.” CD

Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets:
The biggest difference is revealed not when things are going well but when coping with failure. Fixed mindset immediately goes into a victim mindset, obsessing over externals. Growth mindset focuses on a sense of ownership and identifying variables within your control. 

“Becoming is better than being. The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.” CD

What is Failure?
Fixed mindset: failure = setbacks.
Growth mindset: failure = not growing. 

“I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures…I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners.” Benjamin Barber

With a growth mindset, failure can still be painful. But it doesn’t define you. It’s an opportunity to learn and grow. 

Validation:
In a growth mindset, the rewarding part is the process—the learning and growth as an individual. External recognition (awards, money, etc.) is always nice, but it’s not sought as a validation of self worth. Those with a true growth mindset possess a Stoic indifference to the winds of fortune. 

Students:
Fixed mindset while studying is all about memorization. Growth mindset is about looking for themes and underlying principles. 

Judgment:
A fixed mindset often reveals itself through a judged-and-be-judged framework. A growth mindset is the shift to a learn-and-help-learn framework. The commitment in the latter is to growth which takes time, effort, and mutual support.

What You Do Is Who You Are – Ben Horowitz

What You Do Is Who You Are – by Ben Horowitz
Date read: 11/14/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

“Culturally, what you believe means nearly nothing. What you do is who you are.” Horowitz’s latest book is all about leading and creating a purposeful culture at work. He defines culture as a set of actions, rather than the beliefs or corporate values that might be taped on the wall. While he pulls relevant case studies in the modern era – Uber, Netflix, McDonald’s – the book is built upon historical accounts of Toussaint Louverture, Genghis Khan, and the samurai. Each highlights a key lesson in culture, leadership, and how to create meaning. Horowitz reminds leaders that their perspective on the culture isn’t relevant – that’s rarely what your people experience. The real question is what employees have to do to survive and succeed? What behaviors get them ahead?

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Why culture matters:
Startups who outsource engineering almost always fail: “It turns out that it’s easy to build an app or a website that meets the specification of some initial idea, but far more difficult to build something that will scale, evolve, handle edge cases gracefully, etc.” BH

“We at Apple had forgotten who we were. One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.” Steve Jobs

“Culture begins with deciding what you value most.” BH

Culture = a set of actions, not beliefs. 

Virtues vs. Values:
Virtues are what you do. Values are what you believe.

Corporate values are worthless because they emphasize beliefs instead of actions.

“Culturally, what you believe means nearly nothing. What you do is who you are.” BH

Create shocking rules:
Should shock people and force them to ask why and must be something they encounter on a daily basis. This helps program the culture. 

Tom Coughlin (New York Giants): If you are on time, you are late. Meetings would start five minutes early. Fined players who failed to be there by that time. It was memorable, forced people to ask why, encountered daily, and helped build discipline.

Leadership:
“When you are a leader, even your accidental actions set the culture.” BH

Emphasize the “why” behind your values and the vision with every chance you get. That’s what gets remembered. 

Act right: “As a leader, you can float along in a morally ambiguous frame of mind until you face a clarifying choice. Then you either evolve or you wall yourself up in moral corruption.” BH

“Your own perspective on the culture is not that relevant. Your view or your executive team’s view of your culture is rarely what your employees experience…The relevant question is, what must employees do to survive and succeed in your organization? What behaviors get them included in, or excluded from, the power base? What gets them ahead?” BH

“Good intentions, pursued without meticulous forethought and follow-through, often lead to catastrophe.” BH

What you do must matter:
Above all else, employees want to know that they matter, they’re making a difference, there’s meaningful work to be done, and they’re moving the bigger picture forward. Without this, it’s impossible to get people to care. 

If a culture can’t make quick decisions or has a void in leadership, it becomes defined by indifference.

Disagree and commit:
As a manager, the worst thing you can do is undermine decisions made above you – creates cultural chaos, makes your team feel marginalized and powerless, and end result is apathy and attrition. 

The way you get to the place of being able to articulate a decision you might not agree with is by asking why. It’s your job to understand the reasoning behind a decision, otherwise you have failed your team. 

Telling the truth isn’t natural. It requires courage. The easy thing to do is to tell someone what they want to hear.

You might not convince everyone you’re right. But everyone must feel heard and that you’ve acknowledged their concerns. This is the path towards disagreeing and committing. 

Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Extreme Ownership – by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
Date read: 11/2/19. Recommendation: 9/10.

One of the best books on leadership that I’ve ever come across. And this is one of those books that I happened to read at the perfect time when I needed these lessons the most. Willink and Babin, two Navy SEALs officers, recall their time leading the most highly decorated special operation unit of the Iraq War. Each chapter highlights one of their leadership principles in action before relating it back to the business world. I found the most relevant section to be on the laws of combat: cover and move, simple, prioritize and execute, and decentralized command. If you want to win, teams must not only know what to do, but they must also know why. As a leader, your job is to ask questions until you understand why. There are also great lessons in empowering yourself by accepting total responsibility, no matter your position, and the importance of being aggressive (not overbearing). As Willink and Babin suggest, there are no bad teams, just bad leaders.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Leadership:
A team’s performance hinges on its leader. The leader’s attitude sets the tone for the team and ultimately determines success or failure.

“There are no bad teams, only bad leaders.” LB

“Leaders must accept total responsibility, own problems that inhibit performance, and develop solutions to those problems.” LB

Victimization is the opposite of ownership and leadership. Place blame on externals, instead of turning attention towards what’s within your control and areas you can actually make a measurable difference. 

Unless it’s a matter of ethics, take the blame. “It’s my fault because I wasn’t as clear as I should have been with X. You’re a talented Y. It was up to me to make sure you knew Z.” Disarms ego. 

Be aggressive, not overbearing. 

The Laws of Combat:
-Cover and move
-Simple
-Prioritize and execute
-Decentralized command

Prioritize and execute:
This is about building a systems mentality. It’s easy to become overwhelmed if you lack a sense of priorities and you’re facing too many tasks at once. Pick the top priority, execute, then move on to the next problem. Same thing holds true for individual product teams. 

Decentralized command:
If you want to win, teams must not only know what to do, but they must also know why.

Alignment comes only when leaders at all levels understand and believe in the vision so they can pass the same understanding to their teams. 

If you get direction you don’t believe in, as a leader, your job is ask questions until you understand the why. Otherwise you’re letting your team down. Why helps get you to a place where you can believe in what you’re doing. 

For your teams to make the best decisions and for you to operate in complete trust and confidence with them, they need to have a fundamental understanding of the mission, the strategy, and the ultimate goal of that mission (Commander’s Intent). Without this, they will not be able to confidently execute.

Maximum number of people anyone can directly manage is 6-10. 

“Junior leaders must know that the boss will back them up even if they make a decision that may not result in the best outcome, as long as the decision was made in an effort to achieve the strategic objective.” JW

Planning:
“A broad and ambiguous mission results in lack of focus, ineffective execution, and mission creep.” LB

Talk through each phase of the mission in plain English, stop at key points and ask questions, have individuals brief back portions of the plan. 

Decision making:
Always evaluate decision in terms of reversibility. Be aggressive with decisions that can be easily reversed. Be deliberate with those that cannot. 

As a default, be aggressive – proactive rather than reactive. Need to be seen as someone who is decisive and can make tough decisions.

Remember, teams are far more willing to forgive a wrong decision than indecision. 

Never Split the Difference – Chris Voss

Never Split the Difference – by Chris Voss
Date read: 10/23/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

An insightful look into principles of effective negotiation from the perspective of former hostage negotiator, now professor, Chris Voss. He provides his own direct accounts of high-stakes negotiations – from bank robberies to kidnappings and hostage negotiations – and dissects the tactics, strategies, and principles he leveraged along the way to diffuse the situation and achieve a favorable outcome. These include powerful concepts like calibrated questions – open-ended questions that get the other side talking and create the illusion of control. The value in this book is that Voss provides tools to navigate more common negotiations like job offers, salaries, big purchases, and everyday meetings.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

“Any response that’s not an outright rejection of your offer means you have the edge.” CV

Calibrated questions:
Open-ended questions give the other side the illusion of control, gets them talking.

Variation of “How am I supposed to do that?” helps create doubt, gets them negotiating against themselves. 

Active listening:
If you want to calm the voice in someone else’s head and get them to let their guard down, focus 100% of your attention on listening to them and actually hearing what they have to say.

^Another way to to train this muscle is through improv.

Don’t go too fast. Trust comes from slowing down and taking the time to pause with someone – making sure they don’t feel rushed.

Mirroring:
Repeat the last three words back to someone, they will inevitably elaborate on what they said first. Insinuates similarity, encourages other side to bond with you and reveal more. 

Labeling:
Validates someone else’s emotion, allows them to feel heard, allows you to create a sense of safety and understanding. Diffuses the power of the emotion over the conversation. 

“It seems like, it sounds like, or it looks like…”

Degrees Kelvin – David Lindley

Degrees Kelvin – by David Lindley
Date read: 9/25/19. Recommendation: 7/10.

A biography of mathematical physicist and engineer, Sir William Thomson (1824-1907). This is a challenging read to get through, especially if you’re not well-versed in thermodynamics or electromagnetism (I’m not). But there’s a compelling story at the heart of Thomson’s life, and that’s what kept me going. Thomson was undeniably brilliant. At 22 he was appointed chair of natural philosophy at Glasgow, and by 31 he helped lay the foundations of thermodynamics. But his early brilliance turned into resistance and obstructionism as he grew older. He refused to keep up with the times and grew out of touch with the latest developments in science. He was remarkably and adamantly wrong about quite a few important topics: he doubted the existence of atoms, believed earth was no more than 100 million years old, and had reservations about radioactivity. Thomson’s story is a cautionary tale of clinging to an antiquated worldview. Everyone tends to think their formative years were sacred. Don’t fall into this trap. If you cling to your era and your generation too tightly, you blind yourself to new ideas.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Sir William Thomson (1824-1907), first British scientist to be elevated to the House of Lords (Lord Kelvin). At 22 became the professor of natural philosophy at Glasgow which he would hold for more than 50 years.

Combining theoretical with practical:
In 1845, Kelvin worked in the Paris laboratory of Victor Regnault to measure the thermal properties of steam and improve steam engine design. Steam power was critical during the industrial revolution. Opened Kelvin’s eyes to practical science and the implications of the theory of heat in technology. Shifted from a mathematician to a scientist during this time. 

Telegraphy introduced him to a world of innovation and patents that helped him generate money through consulting and advising. Mixed science with business meetings. Made his mark in the world of commerce and enterprise. 

Multidisciplinary:
Kelvin was a scientist + technologist, academic + entrepreneur, philosopher + practical thinker. 

Divide in his reputation (from young to old):
In newspapers and publications, his scientific knowledge was remarkable. At meetings and conferences, he was a crank. 

Refused to keep up with the times and grew out of touch with the latest developments in science. And he was remarkably wrong about quite a few important topics: doubted the existence of atoms, believed earth was no more than 100 million years old, had reservations about radioactivity. 

And he was relentless in his defense of incorrect positions such as the 100m year assessment of earth. Wrote to the London Times in 1906 arguing against radioactivity (even though it was widely accepted that radioactive decay involved the transmutation of one element into another). 

Everyone tends to think their formative years were sacred, don’t fall into this trap. Don’t cling to your era and your generation too tightly or you blind yourself to the latest developments. Kelvin is a perfect example of someone who grew out of touch as the years passed.

Brilliance at a young age (laying foundations of thermodynamics all before he turned 31, exploring the nature of electricity and magnetism) turned into resistance and obstructionism as he grew older. 

Took a very “mechanical” view of the universe that limited his imagination and rendered him an antique. 

Michael Faraday:
Part of Kelvin’s brilliance and folly was the fact that he couldn’t understand or contemplate an idea until he was able to put it in a mathematical form. Michael Faraday, by contrast, took a complete opposite approach because he didn’t know mathematics. Faraday’s power was one of pure imagination - he devised theories in pictures

At 13, Faraday apprenticed under a bookseller and read whatever he could get his hands on. Electricity and chemistry peaked his interest, bought glass jars, and began to run his own experiments. He was fanatical and orderly in taking notes. Completely dedicated to self-improvement. Similar narrative to Benjamin Franklin.

Drawdown periods and isolation: Faraday wasn’t a regular at meetings and conferences and he turned down numerous offers for professorial positions. “After spending his early research years mainly on chemical work (notably he succeeded in liquefying chlorine), he moved into electrochemistry (reactions stimulated by the passage of electric current through solutions) and thence into his pioneering and utterly original studies of electricity and magnetism.” DL

Vision: Faraday shaped modern view of electromagnetic field more than anyone else. “He was a magnificent experimenter, but guiding his experiments was a powerful vision of electromagnetism. He had one of the great theoretical minds in physics.” DL (this is what Kelvin lacked)

Constructing a theory:
Kelvin’s method: “Apply sound reasoning to empirical knowledge and thereby create a theory that was sweeping and general but at the same time founded on fact.” DL

“He had an exceptional ability to sort and clarify, to resolve confusion and contradiction, and many of the standard elements of classical thermodynamics trace back to his definitions and arguments.” DL

Development of thermodynamics:
Great example of how murky discoveries in science can be. Rarely can one person be credited with a discovery. Rankine, Thomson, Clausius, Carnot, Joule, all made major contributions. Helped establish thermodynamics as a fundamental discipline of physical science. 

Escaping the Build Trap – Melissa Perri

Escaping the Build Trap – by Melissa Perri
Date read: 9/2/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

One of the most insightful overviews of product management as a discipline that I’ve found. This is a great resource for beginners and experts alike. Perri discusses the role of product, career paths, strategy, how to organize product teams, and the difference in product-led organizations. The core message of the book is that organizations who become stuck measuring their success by outputs, rather than outcomes, will fail. The build trap is when you obsess over the rate at which you’re shipping and developing features, rather than focusing on the actual value they produce.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Core components of a product-led organization:
-Role (right responsibilities and structure)
-Strategy (promotes good decision making)
-Process (experimentation)
-Organization (policies, culture, and rewards)

In a product-led organization, the primary driver of growth and value for the company is the success of their products. For comparison, in a sales-led organization, contracts define their product strategy. 

The build trap:
“When organizations become stuck measuring their success by outputs rather than outcomes. It’s when they focus more on shipping and developing features rather than on the actual value those things produce.” MP

Rewards busyness, rather than producing value for customers, hitting business goals, and innovating against competitors.

If you want to be more strategic, you have to stop measuring based on the quantity of features shipped. 

What is product? And what it takes to be good:
“Product management is the domain of recognizing and investigating the known unknowns and of reducing the universe around the unknown unknowns…It takes a certain skill to be able to sift through the massive amounts of information and to identify the right questions to ask and when to ask them.” MP

Product focuses on the why. Project management focused on the when. Answering the why demands a strategic mindset that understands the customer, business, market, and organization. “Project managers who are put into product management roles often become waiters waving a calendar.” MP

Tactical work in product: shorter-term actions, building features, getting them out the door. Senior Product and below. 

Strategic work in product: positioning the product and company to win in the market and achieve goals. VP of Product and above.

Operational work in product: tying strategy back to the tactical work. Director of Product.

Strategy:
A good company strategy has two parts, operational framework (day to day) and strategic framework (how company realizes the vision through product or service). 

“If you’re aligned coherently and you have a good strategic framework, you can then allow people to make decisions without a lot of management oversight.” MP

Product initiatives answer how? How can I reach business goals and objectives by creating new products or optimizing existing products? Netflix wanted people to be able to stream on any device. So they created an initiative and suggested solutions (AKA bets or options): Roku, Xbox, an app. 

The Product Kata:

1. Understand the direction

2. Problem exploration

3. Solution exploration

4. Solution optimization

Avoid the temptation to rush in and apply a practice at the wrong stage. Don’t start experimenting if the problem isn’t yet known.

“Don’t spend your time over designing and creating unique, innovative solutions for things that are not core to your value proposition.” Brian Kalma

Lean Analytics – Alistair Croll, Benjamin Yoskovitz

Lean Analytics – by Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz
Date read: 8/11/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

The best book that I’ve read to date on product metrics and using data to your advantage without overanalyzing. The core of the book focuses on how to use data to build a better startup faster. Croll and Yoskovitz walk through a dashboard for every stage of a business, from validating a problem, to identifying customers, to deciding what to build, to positioning yourself. They discuss how to choose strong metrics and the analytics frameworks available for building a successful business (Pirate Metrics, Engines of Growth, Lean Canvas, Growth Pyramid). Croll and Yoskovitz also define their own “Lean Analytics” framework which features five stages – empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, scale – and explain the metrics you should be tracking and the gates required to move forward at each stage. This is a great resource for founders and product managers if you’re looking to improve your analytics and be more strategic with key metrics.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

How to use data to build a better startup faster. Dashboard for every stage of business, from validating a problem, to identifying customers, to deciding what to build, to positioning yourself. 

Find a meaningful metric, experiment to improve it until it’s good enough for you to move on to the next stage of your business. 

Airbnb photography metric:
Hypothesis: hosts with professionally photographed homes will get more business and sign up for this as a service. Airbnb took the Concierge MVP approach and sent professional photographers to take pictures of hosts’ homes. Initial tests with this MVP showed that listings featuring professional photographs received 2-3X more bookings. The new metric they began to monitor was shoots per month (already knew it resulted in more bookings). 

Good metrics:
Comparative, understandable, a ratio or rate, changes the way you behave (actionable). 

Total signups = a vanity metric. “Total active users” is a bit more insightful, but even better is “percent of users who are active.” Tells you the level of engagement users have with your product. 

Be data-informed, not data-driven:
Slippery slope towards overanalyzing: “Using data to optimize one part of your business, without stepping back and look at the big picture can be dangerous – even fatal.”

Analytics frameworks for building a successful business:
Pirate metrics: AARRR - acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, referral. 

Learn Startup, engines that drive growth: sticky, virality, payment. 

Sean Ellis’s Growth Pyramid: product market fit, stack the odds (find defensible unfair advantage), scale growth.

Lean analytics: empathy, stickiness, vitality, revenue, scale. Each of these has a gate required before you’re able to move forward (page 53). 

Two-sided marketplaces:
Start by focusing on whoever has the money, model the buyer side as your primary focus. Harder to find people who want to spend money, than it is people who want to make money. 

When Uber launched in Seattle, they created supply. They overcame chicken-and-egg problem by buying up towncars, paying drivers $30 an hour to drive passengers, and switched to commission once there was sufficient demand. 

Business models vs. business plans:
“Business plans are for bankers; business models are for founders.”

“By knowing the kind of business you are, and the stage you’re at, you can track and optimize the One Metric That Matters to your startup right now. By repeating this process, you’ll overcome many of the risks inherent in early-stage companies or projects, avoid premature growth, and build atop a solid foundation of true needs, well-defined solutions, and satisfied customers.”

Empathy (stage 1):
Primary job is to get inside someone else’s head. Discovering and validating a real problem. Then find out if your proposed solution is likely to work. Interview at least 15 people at each stage. 

Goal of this stage is to determine whether the problem is painful enough for enough people and they’re already trying to solve it. 

“Always know what risk you’re eliminating, and then design the minimum functionality to measure whether you’ve overcome it.”

Stickiness (stage 2):
Focus is squarely on retention and engagement. Are people using product as expected? Are they getting enough value out of it?

Goal of this stage is to build a core set of features that gets used regularly and successfully. 

One in, one out: If a new feature doesn’t improve the one metric that matters most, remove it. 

Major risk is driving new traffic when you’re unable to convert that attention into engagement.

Revenue (stage 4):
Shift focus from proving idea is right to proving you can make money in scalable, self-sustaining way. 

You need to be able to answer these: how big can the business grow, how good can the margins get, and what kind of barriers to entry does it have?

“Users engage with the online world in three postures: creation (often on a computer with a keyboard), interaction (usually with a smartphone), and consumption (with a tablet).”

User groups and feedback:
You can get better answers by asking your customers to make a selection of one alternative from a set of possibilities, rather than asking them to rate something on a scale of 1 to 10. “Would you prefer a delicious, high calorie candy made with artificial ingredients or a bland, low calorie organic candy?”

“Asking customers to trade off variations of combinations, over and over, dramatically improves prediction accuracy.”

Richard Feynman – Six Easy Pieces

Six Easy Pieces – by Richard Feynman
Date read: 8/2/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

Perhaps the most accessible introduction to physics that there is. Six Easy Pieces highlights the easiest, foundational chapters from The Feynman Lectures on Physics – a book based on Feynman’s lectures to undergraduates at the California Institute of Technology between 1961-1963. The chapters discuss atoms, basic physics, how physics fits in with other sciences, energy, gravity, and quantum behavior. Feynman’s ability to reduce complex subjects into simple pieces and stories, weaving in his humor and showmanship along the way, made him such a fascinating, approachable teacher.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Features the six most accessible chapters from The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1963). 

Intro on Feynman:
Demonstrated balance in his practicality and showmanship. “Feynman was driven to develop a deep theoretical understanding of nature, but he always remained close tot he real and often grubby world of experimental results.” Paul Davies

Similar to Benjamin Franklin, broke arbitrary rules at will, viewed his world and social environment as a series of puzzles and challenges.

“For Feynman, the lecture hall was a theater, and the lecturer a performer, responsible for providing drama and fireworks as well as facts and figures.” David L. Goodstein

On his teaching methods: “First figure out why you want the students to learn the subject and what you want them to know, and the method will results more or less by common sense.” Feynman

What distinguished Feynman was his ability to reduce deep, abstract ideas to something you could begin to wrap your mind around.

Fundamentals of physics:
Experimentation: “The principle of science: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific ‘truth.’”

“The sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment.”

Imagination: But you also need imagination to take hints, guess at patterns beneath them, and run another round of experiments to check your guess. Similar to product development. 

The most important hypothesis in all of science: “Everything is made of atoms…there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.” 

How to tell if a guess is right: 1) When nature has arranged to be simple with few parts so we can predict what will happen. 2) Measure against less specific rules derived from them. Bishop always on a red square, always check on our idea about the bishop’s motion by looking for that. 3) Approximation.

If it’s not science, it’s not necessarily bad:
Avoid getting trapped into a shallow perspective: ”If something is said not to be a science, it does not mean that there is something wrong with it; it just means that it is not a science.”

The small and large operate according to entirely different laws:
Things on a small scale behave like nothing you have any direct experience with.

Isabella – Kirstin Downey

Isabella: The Warrior Queen – by Kirstin Downey
Date read: 8/17/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

A portrait of Isabella of Castile (1451-1504), Queen of Spain, whose unlikely rise to the throne helped establish her as one of the most powerful, poised female leaders in history. Isabella was a complex figure with a complicated legacy to match. She financed Christopher Columbus’s journey to the New World and was one of the first to grasp its significance. She led the reconquest of Granada–the crown jewel of Muslim forces in southern Spain–through ten grueling years. And she unified a war-torn country, riddled with crime and political conflict, but in doing so established the Spanish Inquisition. Downey sheds a human light on Isabella, despite her polarizing reputation. If nothing else, the way Isabella navigated a minefield of powerful men proves deeply inspiring.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Isabella’s childhood:
Spain was a kingdom splintered by political conflict, countryside was riddled with crime, rulers were distracted by constant civil wars. 

In 1453, Constantinople fell to Muslim Turks. Set tone for constant fear and turmoil between Muslim and Christian worlds. Viewed as an omen of bad things to potentially come. Isabella was born into a world where the Ottomans posed a universal military threat and were attempting to make their bid as the world’s super power. 

Isabella turned to the Catholic Church which gave her life some sense of stability amidst the chaos. Feared the unknown in the spiritual realm, made her susceptible to the influence of church officials. 

Grew up third in line for throne, considered valuable mainly for her potential as a pawn in a political marriage when the moment called for it. 

Humble beginnings led to an unlikely rise to power in a time when women weren’t likely to wield power. 

Characteristics: devout, articulate, pointed, idealistic, tough, disciplined, farsighted.

Multidisciplinary:
Multilingual (French, Italian, Castilian Spanish, Portuguese), musically gifted (played several instruments and sang), magnificent dancer. 

Dualities:
"She was not a woman to suffer a slight lightly or forgive easily. In addition to Isabella’s good qualities, a certain hardness of character was developing in her. It made her able to survive the difficulties of her childhood and adolescence, but it also made her rigid and unforgiving.” KD

Rise to the throne:
In 1468, Isabella’s brother, Alfonso, died (either by poisoning or the plague) while in conflict with their older half brother, Enrique (King Henry IV). Isabella had taken Alfonso’s side, but after his death, she was next in line for the throne and in serious danger (people close to the throne had a habit of dropping dead in those days). From here she had to tread lightly.

A note on poison: poison was so popular in those days that there were schools of poison operating in Venice and Rome. A new word was coined – Italianated – which referred to murder by poison. Borgias also moved from Valencia to Rome and became experts in the field. 

Discipline: Isabella was proclaimed Queen of Seville in Alfonso’s place. Nobles urged her to take the throne. She could have clung to her first taste of real power. As Downey notes, throughout history those who have tasted power have been extremely reluctant to surrender it. Instead she weighed her options, considered the terrain, weighed her loyalty to Enrique against her own ambitions. Decided to favor patience over boldness, understanding Enrique’s claim to the throne was stronger. Asked to restore peace and the kingdom to Enrique. But she negotiated key terms: she was to be named the successor, would never have to marry against her will.

The reality of a female ruler in this era:
Men were shocked - it was viewed as a theoretical possibility, but not one to take seriously. Flew in the face of tradition. When Ferdinand learned she assumed the throne, he went into a state of rage. Saw himself as the legitimate ruler. Instead of backing down, Isabella held her ground. She softened his resistance by creating a power-sharing agreement that gave Ferdinand little real power and instead much of the symbolic importance (his name would come first on documents, proclamations, coins). Allowed him to claim credit for much of Isabella’s action over the course of their lives. But Isabella was the one leading the way. Prime example, Ferdinand wasn’t proficient in Latin, the official language of many heads of state, Isabella was. She controlled most communication. 

“Isabella’s role in Castile as reigning queen was so rare in world history that observers and commentators seemed unable to comprehend that a woman could be sovereign, and they persisted in identifying Ferdinand as the ruler regardless of the facts.” KD

After Isabella’s death, Ferdinand’s inability to rule became glaringly obvious. Contributed nothing significant of his own and entered Spain in pointless spats. 

Granada:
Fear of Ottoman attacks on Iberian peninsula, led Isabella to rally troops under Christian banner to protect the kingdom. 

Granada was the heart of Muslim forces in southern Spain. A hilltop, almost impenetrable, fortress. Reconquest would last ten years, with terrible casualties and violence on both sides. 

Granadans were undone, despite early victories, by infighting at home. 

Ability to bend people to her will: The main turn of events took place at the battle of Lucena. The Prince of Granada, Boabdil, was captured when his exhausted horse fell into a river and he surrendered. Ferdidand and Isabella knew there were problems between Boabdil and his father, the Sultan, Abu al-Hasan. Instead of treating him like a prisoner or ordering him executed, they treated him with great respect and politeness. His mother, Fatima, sent a fortune to secure his release. Boabdil also pledged himself to Isabella and Ferdinand and agreed to make large tribute payments each year. 

Abu al-Hasan soon fell ill and left Boabdil in a direct competition with his uncle, El Zagal, in a direct competition for the throne. Boabdil was captured once again at the battle of Loja. Isabella and Ferdinand promised to support him in a coup against his uncle before he was released. Boabdil captured Granada when his uncle left to defend another front, permanently dividing the troops on two fronts. Ultimately, this secret understanding led to the surrender of Granada. First significant triumph against Islam in hundreds of years.

Christopher Columbus:
Similarities to Isabella, “both possessed a messianic sense of destiny, intermingled with intense religiosity.”

Excellent mariner, but terrible administrator and judgment. 

In many ways, Columbus is the exact opposite of Ernest Shackleton. Favored his ego over the crew’s morale. First sailor to spot land on the voyage west was to receive a silk jacket and a reward of 10,000 maravedis from the queen. Columbus stole credit from a man named Rodrigo de Triana, and claimed the credit for himself. Eventually, men refused to follow his orders and he faced constant mutinies. 

On his return journey, instead of sailing directly for Spain, first stopped in Portugal, calcimining he had been blown by a powerful storm to the port of Lisbon. Columbus had private conversation with King João, gloating, after Portugal had previously rejected financial support for the expedition. 

On his third journey to the New World, found Santo Domingo in a state of chaos. Most people he left there were dead, the others were ill with syphilis. Instead of fixing the problem, he abandoned those people in search for new lands. Crews rebelled against him. Eventually he was sent home in chains. 

Isabella’s legacy:
Helped shift the government to be more professional – away from noble birth and more towards an educated elite chosen by merit. 

Sought to eliminate corruption in the church and apply new scrutiny. 

Emphasis on girls’ education, set new standard for women across Europe. 

Spanish Inquisition: showcased a failure to consider second and third-order consequences. Used to unify the kingdom during brutal wartime. But survived for three-hundred years after Isabella, creating an easy way to suppress and punish minorities. Haunted Spain for generations. 

Short-sighted, shallow thinking: “Isabella had succeeded in making Spain almost monolithically Catholic, but she had lost the industry and artistry of the Jews and Muslims who had lived there for hundreds, even thousands, of years. She made many enemies for the kingdom in doing so.” 

But far-sighted and recognized the world might be a bigger place than many believed at the time of her birth. Her eagerness to explore led to discovery of New World (or at least the recognition of its true value). New World was key to Spain’s prosperity (they extracted, $1.5 billion in gold and silver over the next 120 years). 

Ruling families of Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Monaco, all share a common ancestry from Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. 

Range – David Epstein

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World – by David Epstein
Date read: 7/25/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

In a complicated, competitive world, there’s a push to focus early and narrowly. Navigating life seems to demand specialization. And the stories told the loudest (Tiger Woods) push that narrative. In reality, far more eventual elites devote less time to deliberate practice early on and instead undergo a sampling period. This offers them an opportunity to learn about and discover their own abilities and inclinations. Only later do they focus on one specific area and ramp up technical practice (Roger Federer). Awesome resource for generalists and those pursuing a multidisciplinary approach in life. This is a book that needed to be written, and Epstein does a great job emphasizing breadth over depth, the dangers of specialization, and the importance of match quality.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My notes:

Illusion of Specialization:
In a complicated, competitive world, there’s a push to focus early and narrowly. Navigating life seems to demand specialization. And the stories told the loudest (Tiger Woods) push that narrative. 

In reality, far more eventual elites devote less time to deliberate practice early on and instead undergo a “sampling period.” This offers them an opportunity to learn about and discover their own abilities and inclinations. Only later do they focus on one specific area and ramp up technical practice (Roger Federer).

Specialization works in fields where massive amounts of narrow practice help with repetitive tasks: golfers, surgeons, poker players, chess-masters, accountants. Doesn’t apply as well to scientists, entrepreneurs, artists. But you need both. 

Breadth > Depth:
Earlier career specializers make more immediately out of college. But delayed specializers end up surpassing them by finding work that better fits their skills and personalities. 

Gathering experience in multiple domains is a force multiplier in creative endeavors (technology, art, etc.). Helps avoid “cognitive entrenchment.”

Standard advice cautions changing directions. That’s why so many people need to have their life choices affirmed by outsiders. 

“If you’re working on well-defined and well-understood problems, specialists work very, very well. As ambiguity and uncertainty increases, which is the norm with systems problems, breadth becomes increasingly important.” Andy Ouderkirk

In product management, you’re a “T-shaped person.” You’re the trunk connecting the “I-shaped people.” Mosaic building. Asking the right questions. Via Jayshree Seth (scientist at 3M). 

Breadth can often reveal itself in terms of genres: Nail Gaiman, Hayao Miyazaki, Jordan Peele. 

Dangers of Specialization:
Specialization has created a “system of parallel trenches” – everyone’s digging deeper but rarely standing up to look at the terrain. Result is that we end up missing systemic issues. 

“Man with a hammer” syndrome. Everything looks like a nail.

Competitive Advantage:
“The bigger the picture, the more unique the potential human contribution. Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability to integrate broadly.” DE

Spaced Repetition and Speed:
Space between practice sessions enhances learning. The struggle to retrieve information when it’s on the edge of your short-term memory ultimately improves retention (See Gabriel Wyner, Fluent Forever).

“Frustration is not a sign you are not learning, but ease is.” DE

The best learning is slow, no matter how tempting learning hacks might seem. Slow, deliberate learning is a struggle that improves performance later. 

“Learning deeply means learning slowly. The cult of the head start fails the learner it seeks to serve.” DE

Vincent van Gogh:
“He tested options with maniacal intensity and got the maximum information signal about his fit as quickly as possible, and then moved to something else and repeated, until he had zigzagged his way to a place no one else had ever been, and where he alone excelled.” DE

Dropped out of school at 15. Went to work full time at his uncle’s art dealership. At 22 he was transferred to Paris. Passed studios of brilliant artists and never made the connection. Instead, found a new obsession in religion and decided he would work towards becoming a missionary in South America. In the meantime, he went to work as an assistant teacher at a boarding school and then became a tutor, followed by time spent as a bookstore clerk. At 27, in despair, turned to the last thing he could think of…drawing. Enrolled in art school at age 33, dropped out after a few weeks after being ridiculed by judges in a drawing competition. One day he found an easel and oil paints and took it to a sand dune in a storm. Slapped on colors, squeezed paint straight from the tube onto the canvas and discovered he could paint. He emerged with a new art without formality that attempted to capture something infinite. Works he made in hours as experiments would later become some of the most valuable pieces in the world. 

Match Quality:
Seek the best match quality based on where you are in this moment…who you are, your motivations, what you’d like to do, what you’d like to learn. Use this as a filter for new opportunities. 

Learn about yourself through a discovery period or sampling period. It’s risky to make long-term commitments (law school, med school), before you know how it fits you. Most personality changes occur between 18 and late 20s. Specializing early means attempting to predict match quality for a person who doesn’t exist yet.

Michael Crichton went to Harvard Medical School out of fear of how little money writers made. But he was able to leverage medical knowledge in his novels and scripts (Jurassic Park, E.R.). 

Patrick Rothfuss, fantasy writer, studied chemical engineering in college and bounced between majors for the next nine years. After that he went to grad school and slowly started piecing together The Name of the Wind. Used his knowledge of chemistry throughout the book and the world he created. 

Chrissie Wellington, four-time Ironman world championship winner, didn’t get on a bike until age 27. She was working on a sanitation project in Nepal and found she could keep up with the Sherpas in the Himalayas. 

“Career goals that once felt safe and certain can appear ludicrous when examined in the light of more self-knowledge. Our work preferences and our life preferences do not stay the same, because we do not stay the same.” DE

“We learn who we are only by living, and not before.” DE

NASA Challenger Disaster:
Occurred because they failed to shift strategies when conditions changed (See Ernest Shackleton for a true master of shifting strategy). NASA failed to value both quantitative and qualitative data. Instead, there was an allegiance to hierarchy and procedure. Valued consensus over conviction. 

Not Everything Needs to Have a Point:
Exploration and curiosity are enough. Louis Pasteur experimenting on chickens with cholera led to lab-created vaccines. Einstein investigating what happens to time in high versus low gravity. 

Hyper-specialization is a push for efficiency. But experimentation and pushing the boundaries, by nature, is inefficient. 

Ten Caesars – Barry Strauss

Ten Caesars – by Barry Strauss
Date read: 7/20/19. Recommendation: 7/10.

Approachable introduction to the lives and reigns of ten Roman emperors, from Augustus to Constantine. It’s a great high-level overview that allows you to explore some of the most influential leaders of the Roman Empire. I enjoy books like these because they introduce different historical figures and help me find the most interesting ones who are worth exploring later, without investing 300 pages in a single person. There are some great lessons in power, strategy, ego, discipline, and philosophy. For the Stoics out there, the section on Marcus Aurelius is particularly insightful.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Augustus: The Founder
Empire: Augustus ended a century of revolution and replaced the Roman Republic with an empire that would last centuries.

Focus on internals: Lost his father at the age of four and one of his guardians plundered his inheritance. But he turned to the internal strengths in his life: his own resilience, his mother, and her family. One of his defining characteristics was self-control. 

Strategy: Turned pain into strategy and became one of the three most powerful men in the Roman Empire by age 20. He was master strategist, thought further ahead and in greater dimensions than everyone else around him. 

Gray area: Augustus ended a civil war, rid the sea of pirates and brought peace. But there were also murders, betrayal, and excess along the way. His successors would have trouble balance the competing (often contradictory) demands.

“Caesar and Augustus were two sides of the coin of Roman genius. Caesar was the god of battle who poured his talent and his ego into two literary classics. Augustus was the Machiavellian statesman who forged his power in blood and iron, and then went on to build a structure of peace and wealth that survived his passing for two hundred years.” BS

Nero: The Entertainer
Seneca (Nero’s tutor): Seneca was born into a wealthy, influential Roman family from Hispania. His father was a writer, his mother studied philosophy. Seneca rose in Rome as an orator, philosopher, essayist, and playwright. Argued that mercy should be the hallmark of Nero’s reign. Advocated eloquence and dignity. Nero would eventually order both Seneca and his mother’s deaths. 

Ego: For the first five years, Nero kept his promises and shared power with the senators. But he craved popularity above all else – he was insecure and vain. When he didn’t get his way, he sought vengeance.

Lack of discipline: Nero would often wander into the streets of Rome at night to party in taverns and brothels. Neglected his primary duties because he viewed himself first and foremost as an artist. 

Marcus Aurelius: The Philosopher
Meditations: Private journal (now best-selling book), where he documented his philosophy (Stoicism) and life. Saved complaints for his diary, never revealed them in public.

Justice and goodness: “As a general, he was conscientious rather than outstanding. And yet Marcus was great because, more than any other emperor, he ruled through a commitment to justice and goodness. He aimed at humanity, steered clear of cruelty, and frequently sought compromise.” BS

Challenges: Faced one of the most difficult times in the Roman Empire by inheriting wars on two foreign fronts, a smallpox epidemic (and shortage of labor that followed after millions died), natural disaster, and financial struggles. 

Preparation: Marcus didn’t come into power until age 40. He received top education in rhetoric and philosophy. His character was impeccable. Admired the philosophy of Epictetus (Stoicism) and achieving inner freedom. But the one thing he had never done, despite holding all the important public offices in Rome, was commanding an army. His principles, discipline, and sense of duty allowed him to rise to the occasion. 

Character: He was thoughtful, but not quick witted. Worked hard. Thrifty. Reputation for being firm but reasonable. Ruled in favor of slave’s freedom whenever possible. Respected the Senate and attended their meetings. Improved welfare for poor children. Carefully monitored grain supply. Cleaned and repaired the streets of Rome. Made gladiators use blunt swords. 

Diocletian: The Great Divider
Restoring stability: First great accomplishment in an empire trapped in violence. For the previous 50 years, 20 men were emperor (average reign < 3 years). “Diocletian was big, bold, brutal, and orderly. Finesse was not his way, but the times did not call for finesse. They demanded military muscle, a steel-trap mind, an iron will, and absolute self-confidence.” BS

Sharing power: Diocletian knew sharing power was the key to maintaining power. Knew it would discourage the ambitious and talented from revolting. Also kew that Rome’s problems were too big for him to handle on his own. Named Maximian co-emperor, and Constantius and Galerius as Caesars who played a military role, serving Diocletian and Maximian. Maximian and Constantius ran the West. Diocletian and Galerius ran the East. But Diocletian controlled overall strategy and had final decision. 

Military strategy: Made border forts smaller, thicker, and harder to access. Number of legions expanded from 33 to 50, but with fewer men per legion (similar to Genghis Khan’s strategy).

Taxation: Massive building campaigns and military budget demanded more money. For the first time in Italy’s history, it was no longer exempt from taxes. Even Rome and the senators had to pay. 

Retirement: First and only Roman emperor to retired. Lived in relative peace in his palace in Split, Croatia for 10 years. Knew it was better to go out on top than to linger and lose loyalty the moment he grew weak. “In victory, know when to stop.” 

Thinking in Systems – Donella H. Meadows

Thinking in Systems – by Donella H. Meadows
Date read: 7/9/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

Great introduction to systems thinking – the ability to step back and appreciate the complexity of the interconnected whole. Meadows emphasizes the dangers of generalizing about complex systems and explains the key elements of resilient systems. This includes feedback loops, self-organization, experimentation, and alignment. She also digs into concepts like the tragedy of the commons, bounded rationality, modeling, and how to avoid the pitfalls of each. The benefit of systems thinking is that is helps you avoid isolated, shallow decision-making. With this comes the ability to appreciate the complexity of large systems, their connections, and how to improve or redesign them, when needed. This is an important book for anyone who’s working on complex problems or wants to grow into a more strategic thinker.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

The system lens:
Helps reclaim intuition about whole systems, hone abilities to understand parts, see interconnections, ask “what if” questions about future behavior, and be creative in redesigns. 

Ancient Sufi story about a king visiting a city of blind citizens on his mighty elephant. Each citizen touched a small part of the elephant (ear, trunk, legs) and drew false conclusions. Need a better understanding of the whole, not just the elements it’s made of. 

Questions for testing the value of a model:

1. Are driving factors likely to unfold this way?

2. If they did, would the system react this way?

3. What is driving the driving factors?

Systems studies are not designed to predict, they’re designed to explore what would happen if factors unfold in a range of different scenarios. 

Dangerous to generalize about complex systems. 

Resilience: 
Rich structure of many feedback loops allows a system to thrive in a variable environment. Similar to Taleb’s concept of anti-fragility.

Resilience is similar to a plateau that a system can play safely upon. The more resilient a system, the larger the plateau and the greater its ability to bounce back when near the edges. Less resilient, smaller plateau.

Awareness of resilience allows you to harness, preserve, or improve a system’s restorative powers. 

Self-organization:
Self-organization is the strongest form of system resilience. System that can evolve can survive almost any change. That’s why biodiversity is so important.

“Insistence on a single culture shuts down learning and cuts back resilience. Any system, biological, economic, or social, that gets so encrusted that it cannot self-evolve, a system that systematically scorns experimentation and wipes out the raw material of innovation, is doomed over the long term on the highly variable planet.” DM

Experimentation is key to anti-fragility and innovation. But it’s difficult because this means giving up control. 

Antifragile: “In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go and dancing with the system.” DM

Hierarchies:
DM: “Complex systems can evolve from simple systems only if there are stable intermediate forms.” Why they’re so common in nature. 

Hierarchies are system inventions – provide stability, resilience, and reduce the amount of information system needs to keep track of. Too much central control overwhelms and breaks a system. Unable to achieve more complex tasks. 

Models:
“Our knowledge of the world instructs us first of all that the world is greater than our knowledge of it.” Wendell Berry

Everything we know about the world is a model – languages, maps, statistics, mental models. Usually correspond well with the world (hints our success as a species), but will never fully represent the world with 100% accuracy. If they did, we would never make mistakes or be surprised. 

Mental flexibility = willingness to redraw boundaries.

Alignment + policy resistance:
Bounded rationality: People make reasonable decisions based on information they have about parts of the system they’re closest too. But they don’t have perfect information or ability to see more distant parts of the systems. This is why narrow-minded behavior arises. 

Policy resistance occurs when goals of subsystems are misaligned. Need an overarching goal to tie things together. Feedback loops should serve the same goal. Much of that is identifying what problem you’re trying to solve.

1967 Romanian government decided they needed more people so they made abortions illegal. Short term results saw birth rate triple, then resistance set in. People pursued dangerous abortion which tripled maternal mortality. 

Hungary, at the same time, was also worried about low birth rate. Discovered it was partially due to cramped housing so they incentivized larger families with more living space. Only partially successful because it was only part of the problem, but not a disaster like Romania.

Sweden was most successful because they recognized that the goal of population and government was not family size, but quality of child care. Birth rate has gone up and down since then without causing panic because they focused on long-term welfare and more robust goal, not a narrow, short-sighted goal. 

Silver Rule Example from Garrett Hardin (see Nassim Taleb, Skin in the Game): people who want to prevent other people from having an abortion aren’t practicing intrinsic responsibility unless they’re personally willing to raise the resulting child.

“If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules and who has power over them.” DM

The tragedy of the commons:
Result of simple growth in a system where a resource is not only limited, but erodible when overused. Selfish behavior more convenient and profitable than responsibility to whole community and shared future. 

E.g. uncontrolled access to national park (over-tourism) bringing in crowds that destroy park’s natural beauties.

Three ways to avoid the tragedy of the commons:

1. Educate and exhort (moral pressure)

2. Privatize the commons (makes direct feedback loop)

3. Regulate the commons (mutual coercion agreements, i.e. traffic lights, parking spaces).

Turning Pro – Steven Pressfield

Turning Pro – by Steven Pressfield
Date read: 7/2/19. Recommendation: 7/10.

A solid follow-up to Pressfield’s earlier book, The War of Art. Short, concise, and relevant for any artist or entrepreneur. Highlights the difference between amateurs and professionals, and what it takes to reach the top of your craft. Pressfield discusses shadow careers, the power of concentration, navigating fear, and standing on your own. He also emphasizes that habits are the primary difference between amateurs and professionals. Professionals have better habits that help them simplify life.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Shadow Careers vs. Your Calling

• Shadow career = metaphor for real career. Shape is similar but entails no real risk. No skin in the game. No consequences.

• Pressfield’s version was driving trucks instead of writing…took pride in it, felt powerful + manly, the work was interesting, romance of being on the road.
  

Power of Habits

• Habits are the primary difference between amateurs and professionals.

• Professionals have better habits that help them simplify life.

• “The Zen monk, the artist, the entrepreneur often lead lives so plain they’re practically invisible.” SP

• Pros face just as much fear, but structure their day to confront and overcome it.
  

Overcoming Resistance

• To overcome resistance, you need concentration and depth.

• If you’re shallow and unfocused, you’ll never make it out.

• The draw to failure or trouble is so strong because its incapacitating, let’s you off the hook.

• What you’re must afraid of is what you must do.
  

Signs of an Amateur

• Fear dictates decisions (fear of being different or rejected leads to inauthenticity, fear of solitude and silence).

• Avoid resistance through drama, denial, distraction.

• To combat this, you need self-awareness.
  

Signs of a Professional

• Seek wisdom and instruction from masters without surrendering self-sovereignty.

• Doesn’t sit around waiting for inspiration, acts in anticipation. Orderly, workmanlike in habits and routine.

• Trusts and examines the mystery. “The place we write from (or paint from or compose from or innovate from) is far deeper than our personal egos. That place is beyond intellect. It is deeper than rational thought.” SP

• “The best pages I’ve ever written are pages I can’t remember writing.” SP
  

Life is a Single Player Game

• There is no tribe. The artist and the entrepreneur enter the arena alone.

• “In the hero’s journey, the wanderer returns home after years of exile, struggle, and suffering. He brings a gift for the people. The gift arises from what the hero has seen, what he has endured, what he has learned. But the gift is not that raw material alone. It is the ore refined into gold by the hero / wanderer / artist’s skilled and loving hands.” SP

A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything – by Bill Bryson
Date read: 6/15/19. Recommendation: 10/10.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is one of the most important books on my shelf. After graduating from university, it’s the first book that reminded me how much I loved reading. It was the catalyst for me to begin building back up my reading habits and I’ve read it multiple times since. At its heart, it’s a book about science and some of life’s biggest questions. Bryson tackles everything from the cosmos and physics to ice ages and evolution. He’s a brilliant writer and storyteller, which helps make complex topics like particle physics more accessible and relatable for novices, like me. The pages are filled with jaw-dropping facts and stories of those enshrined in (or forgotten by) the annals of science. The amount of knowledge in this book is incredible. But the most important thing you’ll come away with is a renewed sense of perspective. It’s a great reminder of just how insignificant we are and how precious life is.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

Newton, Principia, and Unlikely Inspiration:
In 1683, Edmond Halley, Robert Hooke, and Christopher Wren made a scientific wager on celestial objects. It was known that planets orbited in a particular kind of oval, but no one understood why. Wren offered a prize worth forty-shillings. Halley became obsessed with the problem and went to Isaac Newton, hoping he could help. Newton had already calculated the ellipse but couldn’t recall where he put the formula. Halley urged him to put it into a paper. The result was Newton’s crowning scientific achievement–Principia–which explained orbits mathematically, outlined three laws of motion, and, for the first time, identified gravity. Halley paid for the book’s publication out of his own pocket when The Royal Society backed out due to financial struggles. Impact of Newton’s laws is hard to overstate…explained ocean tides, motion of planets, the trajectory of cannonballs, why we aren’t lost to space as the planet spins beneath us. 

Lord Kelvin, Polymath, Master of the Long Game:

• Admitted to Glasgow University at the age of 10.

• Graduated from Cambridge, won top prizes for rowing and mathematics, launched a musical society.

• At the age of 22, became professor of natural philosophy at Glasgow for the next 53 years. 

• Wrote 661 papers, gained 69 patents, contributed to every branch of the physical sciences.

• Suggested the method that led to the invention of refrigeration, created scale of absolute temperature, invented boosting devices to send telegrams across oceans. 

Radioactivity and Early Adopters:
Many assumed radioactivity had to be beneficial since it was so energetic. It wasn’t banned in consumer products until 1938. Up until that point manufacturers put radioactive thorium in toothpaste and laxatives. Until the 1920s the Glen Springs Hotel in Finger Lakes (NY) featured the therapeutic effects of its “Radioactive mineral springs.”

Einstein:
Early life revealed little of what was to come. Didn’t learn to speak until he was three. Failed college entrance exams on first try. 

Took advantage of being underemployed: 1902 took job at Swiss patent office and stayed for 7 years. Challenging enough to engage his mind, but not enough to distract him from physics. Here he produced the special theory of relativity in 1905.

Drawdown periods: For originality, tune out. Einstein’s “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” had no footnotes or citations. It was like he reached the conclusions by pure thought, without listening to outside opinion. 

Little recognition early on: As an outsider, he was largely ignored in the physics community, despite solving several of the deepest mysteries of the universe. Proceeded to apply and get rejected as a university lecturer and high school teacher.

Theory of relativity: Space and time are not absolute. They’re relative to both the observer and the thing being observed. Faster one moves, the more pronounced effects become. The faster we accelerate, the more distorted we are, relative to an outside observer. 

Spent the second half of his life searching for a unified theory of physics, but failed. Physics has two bodies of laws, one for the very small, one for the universe at large.

Discovery by Bridging Ideas
Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest-scholar with a Ph.D. from MIT, was the first to suggest that the universe began as a single geometrical point, a “primeval atom” which burst into existence and had been moving apart ever since. Referred to this as his “fireworks theory.” It was the first hint at the Big Bang. Combined his knowledge of Hubble’s discovery of the universe expanding and increasing speed in every direction, and Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. 

Plate Tectonics:
“Look at the globe and what you are seeing is really a snapshot of the continents as they have been for just one-tenth of 1 percent of the Earth’s history.” BB

“The history of any one part of the Earth, like the life of a soldier, consists of long periods of boredom and short periods of terror.” Derek V. Ager

Disasters + Extinctions:
Last super volcano eruption took place 74,000 years ago in Toba, northern Sumatra. It was followed by six years of volcanic winter. Carried humans to brink of extinction, no more than a few thousand individuals. Modern humans arose from a very small population (explains our lack of genetic diversity). Some evidence shows for the next 20,000 years, human population never grew beyond a few thousand at a given time. Huge amount of time to recover from our perspective of time. But not from Earth’s. 

 99.99% of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us. Average lifespan of a species is about four millions years.

 Permian Extinction: 245 million years ago, wiped out the dinosaurs and 95% of animals known from fossil records disappear. Closest we’ve come to total obliteration. 

Life is Precious: 
“From the bottom of the deepest ocean trench to the top of the highest mountain, the zone that covers nearly the whole of known life, is only something over a dozen miles–not much when set against the roominess of the cosmos at large.” BB

Excellent Location: “We are, to an almost uncanny degree, the right distance from the right sort of star, one that is big enough to radiate lots of energy, but no so big to burn itself out swiftly…We are also fortunate to orbit where we do. Too much nearer and everything on Earth would have boiled away. Much farther away and everything would have frozen.” BB

Earth would have been uninhabitable if it had been just 1 percent farther or 5 percent closer to the sun. Think about Venus (sun’s warmth reaches it two minutes before us).

“We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life’s dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are only here because of time extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes.” BB

“The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billion years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.” BB

“If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here–and by ‘we’ I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also a singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.” BB

The Power of Being an Outsider:
Watson and Crick (no formal training in biochemistry) beat out many top insiders as they worked to discover the structure of DNA. 

Alexander von Humboldt:
Observed that there are three stages in scientific discovery: first, people deny that it is true; then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.

Origins:
Five million years ago, Panama rose from the sea, bridging North and South America, which disrupted warmer currents between the Pacific and Atlantic, and changed precipitation patterns across 50% of the world. Africa began to dry out and apes climbed down from trees in jungles to find a new way of life in the savannah.

One million years ago, upright beings left Africa and spread across the globe. Averaging 25 miles a year. 

Modern human is still 98.4% genetically indistinguishable from the modern chimpanzee. More difference between zebra and horse. 

Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life – by Anne Lamott
Date read: 6/2/19. Recommendation: 8/10.

Hilarious, insightful resource for writers. Lamott discusses everything from intuition and finding your voice, to the writing process and its rewards. Along the way, she weaves in personal experience and reveals the harsh realities of writing and publication–all in good humor. It’s a call to begin writing, find meaning in the process, and trust your voice. Bird by Bird is a tribute to good writing and dedicated readers.

See my notes below or Amazon for details and reviews.

My Notes:

The Gifts of Writing:

• Gives you an excuse to do new things, see new places, explore. Also, motivates you to carefully observe life.

• “Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up.” AL

• “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.” AL

Quake Books/Writers:

• Feeling you get when you come across a kindred soul who seems to speak for you. 

• “For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave.” AL

• “You wouldn’t be a writer if reading hadn’t enriched your soul more than other pursuits.” AL

The Work Is its Own Reward:

• The act of writing gives more and teaches more than publication. It is its own reward.

• “It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.” AL

• “You are going to have to give and give and give, or there’s no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward.” AL

Good Writing:

• “Good writing is about telling the truth” AL

• “An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.” AL

The Process:

• Start by writing really shitty first drafts. That’s the only way to get started. 

• Writing a book in a single flash of brilliance is a fantasy of the uninitiated. 

• First draft = down draft. Just get it down. Look for sentences or paragraphs where you’re on to something.

• Second draft = up draft. Fix it up. Figure out how to better communicate what you’re trying to say. Strip away busyness. 

• Third draft = dental draft. Check every tooth. 

Plot vs. Characters:

• “Plot grows out of character.” Not the other way around. 

• Determine what each character cares about most in the world – that’s what’s at stake. 

• ABCDE (action, background, development, climax, ending)

Intuition:

• Confidence and intuition come from trusting yourself. This is how you reach the art of relaxed concentration. 

• Make space for intuition. Rely on it. Let it guide the way. Get your rational mind out of the way.

Writer’s Block:

• Start by accepting it. Give yourself permission to be stuck. Accept that you’re not in a productive creative period. Once you do that, you free yourself to fill back up. 

Finding Your Voice:

• What you bring: “Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning.” AL

• “You cannot write out of someone else’s big dark place; you can only write out of your own.” AL

• Bring out what’s inside of you and you will be able to sustain that indefinitely. Try to bring out something else, it will destroy you.