Lessons I'm learning
Presented in their simplest form
#2
Set realistic goals.
We're encouraged to push ourselves and set ambitious goals. But setting goals too high, too often, increases the chance and frequency of failure.
Failing repeatedly is tremendously discouraging and gnaws away at your motivation and self belief.
I should set goals that are challenging and daring but realistic enough that I have a reasonable chance of success.
Example
#1
Celebrate wins.
I tend to spend a lot of time and energy on failure but contrastly find myself quickly moving on to the next goal when I achieve something.
I should stop to celebrate my wins.
Inspired Tweets
An updated collection of my bookmarked tweets
Many great ideas have never seen the light of day due to perfectionism.
You don't have to fix every flaw before seeking feedback. You just need to be proud of your progress.
Don't wait to share a project until it's done. Share it when what's done so far reflects your potential.
The best thing I've learned over the years is that motivation comes in waves. Work hard when you have it, enjoy life when you don't 😊
The only person you're hurting when you get continually 'outraged' about events outside your control is yourself.
Continual anger is a poison that if it were in a bottle with a skull & crossbones ☠️ on it, you would never drink.
I've said it before but I was reminded again: the first rule of personal growth is that it is always going to get worse before it gets better. I've identified a behavior I want to stop, but I haven't identified the thoughts, feelings, and decisions that precede the behavior. 1/
“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which....
A big reason why scaling organizations is very difficult. More people = more complexity.
“At 7 total people, your company is actually a bundle of 21 relationships. At 15, that’s 105 relationships. At 35 people, your business is the cumulation of 595 relationships.” (@WorkNOBL)
The modern struggle
Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower,
fasting, meditating, and exercising,
up against armies of scientists & statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, & medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games & addictive drugs.
“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.”
-Thomas Edison
The internet is widening the gap between the curious and the non-curious.
The former added hundreds of hours a year of podcasts, blogs and books.
The latter mostly news and pictures of other people’s food.
The larger a company becomes,
The more bureaucratic it becomes.
The more bureaucratic it becomes,
The more fearful it becomes.
The more fearful it becomes,
The less original it becomes.
Where there are large groups of people, there is mediocrity and destruction.
People are often surprised when a team accomplishes a lot despite being small.
Teams often accomplish a lot *because* they’re small. Fewer meetings, less miscommunication, tighter working relationships.
Fight the temptation to grow headcount faster than necessary!
this is why great companies are built on figuring out the design problem of maximizing aligned incentives. it's not about putting the customer first when decisions are difficult- it's about figuring out a model where there's never a conflict in the first place. @Austen
Carry yourself like a company about 12 mos further along than you are
About the right amount of confidence to show customers, investors, hires, etc
Less is a bit meek
More crosses line to hubris
Love this quote from the @adobe earnings call from CEO Shantanu Narayen:
"Reduced churn is the new growth."
Churn for any SaaS business is a drag on both growth and profitability. It's worthy of the same level of focus you put on acquiring new customers (perhaps even more).
"Involve groups in the creative process and you inevitably end up with a pile of pleasing, socially-acceptable lies. Contrast blockbuster movies with the great books." - @naval
Reasons your product will fail:
1. Too complex
2. Can’t easily be described
3. Didn’t iterate fast enough
4. Bland
5. Failed to launch into a community
6. Doesn’t save time/money
7. Poor design
8. Does too much
9. Didn’t take a feature risk
10. Listened to wrong the customers
People don’t want good products.
They want simple solutions that improve their lives.
That could mean saving them time/money.
It could equate to helping them disconnect from reality through entertainment.
You could make their job easier.
But people never want good products.