Andy Finnegan

I saw this excellent chart about "comparative rate-of-learning" in startups vs. normal job and had to drop everything to write about it. 

The most valuable compensation for working at a startup as opposed to a “normal job” is a dramatically higher rate-of-learning (ROL).

Though it may seem like money is spilling all over the streets in Silicon Valley, don’t get distracted by shiny objects. Play the long game. Put yourself in a position to maximize your rate-of-learning, even—and especially—if it makes you a little uncomfortable. The long game is hard, but rewarding, because you’ll know you had the strength to make the steeper climb.

The gap reminds me of James Clear's "Power of Tiny Gains" chart; I want to be on the higher velocity curve. As time goes on, these small improvements compound and you suddenly find a very big gap between people who learn slightly more on a daily basis vs. those who don't. 

https://kyletibbitts.com/rate-of-learning-the-most-valuable-startup-compensation-56dddc17fa42

Today is Spencer my departed Frenchie's birthday. 

You should be 10-years old. 

You should be my 3-year-old daughter's best friend.

You should be getting ready for Boston springtime walks with me. 

Instead, you are not here. I miss you. I am cleaning out my work desk, in preparation for an office move, and saw this Limerick thumbtacked to my wall: 

Who wrote that? A real cancer survivor. After he "rung the bell" to signal his remission, he immediately sought you to read it aloud and give you his "Golden Mensh Award." You did that. 

I loved volunteering with you. You made such an impact. 

I picture you waiting for us to walk through the doors. When we eventually do, as death's arrow spare's no one, I will give the biggest pet. 

Limerick

There is a lodge called Hope 

Filled with people, who are able to cope

They have strength, courage and love

and share these traits with friends and above

So be a believer and Joy will be your tote 

Loved the "Extreme ownership" mindset by the Eagles after their crushing Super Bowl loss. As leaders, we learned two things on Sunday: Accept responsibility and win or learn (h/t Daily Coach). 

1. James Bradberry: "It was a holding. I tugged his jersey. I was hoping they would let it slide."
2. Jalen Hurts: "Win, lose, I always reflect on the things I could have done better, anything you could have done better to try and take that next step. It's a very tough feeling, but I know the direction is to rise and that will be the M.O. going forward." 
   

“I am a destroyer of all that confronts me. I am relentlessly pushing forward against all obstacles. I put people & the mission ahead of myself.” - Jocko Willink 

Enjoyed this Twitter thread: Adam Grant on Twitter: "Group wisdom begins with individual creativity."

Highlighted key parts. 

P.S. Too many good ideas die in the meeting notes. How do we execute better? Two of my favorite sayings: 

"vision without execution is hallucination" 

"execution is worship" 

I saw these “Monty’s Mantras” (Phoenix Suns coach) and too good not to share!! Rank ordered my six favorites:

1. I really like this slight tweak in words to make it positive

2. This mantra reminds me of a favorite Eli Manning quote, “nerves are something you feel when you are unprepared …”

3. Blessed to be able to WFH during this and stay safe!

4. I like the quitter/camper/climber analogy

5. I hope to get this message across to Freya without being too hard, letting her fail, etc.

6. I remember this being something Tom Brady’s dad used to tell him growing up

h/t https://www.nba.com/suns/features/montys-mantras

WFH is so two-dimensional. 

We lose so much on the relationship side. Whether it’s grabbing coffee, walking to lunch, running into someone in the kitchen, thinking on flights home from work trips, etc. 

How do we re-create that magic?

Below is a concrete, actionable way to solve the "scheduling serendipity" conundrum. You need to set expectations in advance to make sure you get a creative, valuable pow-wow instead of a Happy Hour. 

H/T Eric Barker Serendipity must be planned now

All hours in the day are not created equal. 

My “best learning times” are early in the morning with no distractions – I can lock in at 5AM, put phone away, no emails, no news, no opportunity cost or FOMO. 

I produce more in these 2 to 3 hours than 5 to 6 hours in the afternoon. 

Are we measuring results or “hard work”? 

Issue is you can’t just put your pencil down after 3 hours of awesome, result producing work and say “I’m done,” right? Especially go-getters, whose “favorite ring is the next one.”

H/T Eric Barker Protect your magic hours

What are we really trying to accomplish "working-from-home"? 

To replicate a 9 to 5 shift? 

What if you could produce the same results in less hours and spend more family time? 

More YOU time? 

When do you "sign-off" for the day? This is where “work/life creep” is trying to steal my soul.

Recently, when my WFH day is over, I ask Alexa to play Trolls soundtrack "I'm coming out" and leave the bedroom to dance with my 22-month old daughter. She's my bestie. That is how I unplug. 

I found my "leave the office the commute home" moment. 

H/T Eric Barker Judge results, not hours

Zig: Everybody is rushing to audio, to video. Writing is hard. 

Zag: There is a major opportunity to translate presentations or events into writing – this is scalable, resource-light and efficient. What is this trying to say? Now write that

H/T Can this just be a paper?  

This

H/T James Clear The greatest gift of sports is learning how to fail in public

Before you write something: What are you trying to say? Explain it out loud. 

Then write that down (or have someone take notes of what you said, then write the draft for you). 

Also works for bullets in PowerPoint slides, memos, etc.

H/T Patrick McKenzie What is this trying to say? Now write that

The comments on this tweet are good, especially this one: “everyone in their own little silo; coming out only to ask for their next task….” Captures where my head is at with remote – yes, some advantages are terrific, but as with all things, needs to be balanced.

1. Imagine being a “digital person” for the rest of your career?

2. How can we justify calling a colleague to say “hey” for 5-minutes instead of writing another work email? 

3. Or take a lunch break to talk about non-work related stuff? Less robotic, more human.

Brightside, I am a big fan of future “WFH Mondays” after getting home Sunday from a long flight!

H/T Sam Altman Can you imagine spending the next 30 years on Zoom calls all day?

1. Be clear about what success looks like.

2. Concrete plan of action.

3. Clear diagnosis of the biggest problem to be solved, focus resources to overcome those hurdles.

Leads to two key questions (“focus”) – I’d love to do this and compare answers.

1. Imagine your team is wildly successful in 3 years. What does that look like? Write down your answer.

2. What are the 1, 2 or 3 most important things we must do, and how can we ensure we do those spectacularly? Write down your answer. 

Article doesn’t mention this, but designing a great route from Point A to Point B is nothing without execution. Execution is worship! Know your ABZs. 

H/T How to be strategic

I realized recently that WFH has got me stuck in “coffee mode,” where my focus is too much on near-term gains / being a machine, but this unbalanced approach has counterintuitively thrown off my productivity. “Beer mode” is a theme that has come up again and again 

… the Bezos quote that “Wandering is an essential counter-balance to efficiency. You need to employ both. The outsized discoveries – the “non-linear” ones – are highly likely to require wandering.” 

The missing small things are impactful: listening to a podcast during a commute, walking to a food truck with peers, talking to someone in the kitchen, grabbing a drink to talk about whatever, or just doing something during work hours that isn’t “efficient” but is human.  

How do we replace that “beer mode” inspiration?

Nose to the grindstone productivity is essential, but so is taking time to wander.

“Sometimes (often actually) in business, you do know where you’re going, and when you do, you can be efficient. Put in place a plan and execute. In contrast, wandering in business is not efficient … but it’s also not random. It’s guided – by hunch, gut, intuition, curiosity, and powered by a deep conviction that the prize for customers is big enough that it’s worth being a little messy and tangential to find our way there. Wandering is an essential counter-balance to efficiency. You need to employ both. The outsized discoveries – the “non-linear” ones – are highly likely to require wandering.” — Jeff Bezos, Amazon

H/T David Perrell Beer Mode and Coffee Mode

The case against too much efficiency

The simplicity of this is *mwah*. Good framework for any kind of sales/learning cycle. Made small tweak in red.

I recently signed up for Y Combinator Startup School and spent many hours here so far. It’s incredible. YC partners doing Stanford lectures on MVP, getting traction, small teams, sales, 30 second / 2-minute pitches, slide decks, and/or written transcripts or essays. They are terrific passive watching videos or audio e.g. going for a walk, a run, doing chores, holding a screaming baby. A few highlights so far below!

YC Essential Startup Advice 

Recently read a suggestion to “end meetings with five minutes of reflection ...” which is stunningly actionable. This idea, ruthlessly executed, can make a more meaningful impact on productivity than anything I can think of. It can really help slow things down. 

Are you being effective or just busy? 

Resist the urge to jump to the next activity. 

Excellence is a matter of steps. Excelling at this one, then that one and then the one after that. Nick Saban’s process is exclusively this — existing in the present, taking it one step at a time, not getting distracted by anything else. Not the other team, not the scoreboard, or the crowd.

“Don’t think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment. That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.”

Let’s say you’ve got to do something difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize. As Bill Belichick famously put it, just do your job.

The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Getting it right from meal to meal, meeting to meeting, project to project, paycheck to paycheck, one day at a time. Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well. 

H/T Ryan Holiday

A theme for how my brain works: understanding the big picture first will set the stage for success in your journey. 

(1) Explore widely. Collect lots of data points. Find out what is possible. 

(2) Turn that data into small, quick experiments. Learn things. Collaborate. Break a few eggs. 

(3) Focus on the best ideas and ruthlessly cut everything else. Information becomes knowledge, knowledge becomes insight, insight becomes wisdom. 

(4) Return to 1. 

You don’t need to memorize a zillion things

I will teach my 1YO daughter Freya at early age to “learn the trunk and big branches.” Makes it less scary to not need to memorize a zillion things 😊.  BUT … you do need to learn the zillion things first before you can connect the dots. Paradox.

Collect the dots, then connect the dots.

Fabulous read 68 bits of unsolicited advice. My top ten: 

(1) Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points. Enthusiasm is infectious and is the fuel for consistent action.

(2) If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting. People only see the end result – the first draft of anything is shit. 

(3) There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with. Get 1% better everyday. 

(4) Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth. Being able to listen well is a superpower. I'd like to get better at this – i.e. "say more," or "what else?" 

(5) Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kick-start their imaginations. Reading daily is one of the most important values I grew up with. Freya has been read 3956946 books so far and I am so proud. This is her all-time favorite 

(6) Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends. Take someone to lunch, order first and tell the cashier you got next. It'll go a long way. 

(7) The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested. Talk in terms of what the other person wants and show genuine interest. Radiate happiness – your tone is like the sun breaking through the clouds.  

(8) Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom. Giving without expectations always comes back. 

(9) Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will. Money is just a tool to create memories with people you love. 

(10) How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. Also, it's okay to change your mind with better information. 

My favorite email philosophies

(1) Nobody wants to read your sh*t – the most important thing we can ask of anyone is their attention, so highlight important areas.

(2) Trust your audience – don’t explain everything in 230435 words. Less is more.

(3) Smartphone text must look good – if not, then redo it until it does.

(4) Link anything clickable – it’s adds extra "oomph," plus it's a catastrophe for reader to Google search “___________” instead of one-click. They will move on to something else.

(5) Use photos – we all have “dinosaur brains,” thousands of years of evolution was images only. Also, humanizes the writer.

(6) Schedule your email  – for times most effective for your audience i.e. hit “send,” but delay delivery until 6AM etc. to catch people pre-commute, pre-work, top of mind. 

A Simple Formula for Writing Better Hooks

(1) "Get 3 yes's in 30 seconds."

(2) Readers should nod their head yes to the headline, subheading, and first sentence.

(3) If they've made it to the third sentence, they're ready for an interesting and compelling story.

Telling a story is one of the best ways we have of coming up with new ideas, and also of learning about each other and our world. It’s been happening since humans first inhabited the earth.

Stories told by firelight put listeners on the same emotional wavelength. Podcasts are campfire stories told by the smartest people in the world that you can access 24/7. It's a cheat code. 

Use AirPods and Overcast "Smart Speed" to shorten the silences between words (boost efficiency by 20-25%). 

1 hour Podcast per day * 365 days = 365 hours / 10 hours per average audio book = 36 books / year. Chiseled, campfire stories. Become a beast. 

Paraphrased from Ignoring v. Not Replying

(1) When someone contacts me, and I don’t reply, they assume I either did not see it or am ignoring it. That might be true but generally, it is not the case. 

(2) What is more likely is that I saw it, I got the message, I understand it, and I may even be acting on it. But for any number of good reasons, I have chosen not to reply to it. 

(3) There is a very big difference between ignoring something and acting on it, but that difference is not visible to the person sending the message. And so they assume that it is being ignored. 

(4) But the truth is I read a lot more and act on a lot more than I acknowledge publicly. And that is the case for many people I know who for various reasons (volume, legal, PR, etc) can’t or don’t reply to many messages.

(5) So my point is don’t assume your messages are being ignored. They may be having the desired impact. But you may not know it.

As a culture, we love finished products. We have little interest and little understanding, however, of what goes on in between—

But all the greats loved that space. That’s where they lived. That’s where they were most alive. And that’s where you have to get comfortable as well, to create something of meaning and lasting value.

Our first effort is rarely good enough. We are too close to our work to see it objectively. Nobody creates flawless first drafts. And nobody creates better second drafts without the intervention of someone else. Athletes watch hours of film of their own performance—under the unrelenting analysis of their coaches—before game day. Getting outside voices is crucial.

You can't jump from A to Z. You have to walk from B to Y. 

H/T Ryan Holiday, David Perell

Do you schedule time with yourself to think? 

Ted Williams' secret sauce was the intensity he studied pitchers, or “knowing your enemy.” 

He would say, “You’re not playing the Cincinnati Reds or the Cleveland Indians, you’re playing that pitcher ... and he’s the guy you concentrate on.” 

Williams batting average dropped off when he swung outside his core, and so to will ours. 

An average hitter can hit a pitch that is over the plate three times better than a great hitter with a questionable ball in a tough spot.

 H/T Barking up the wrong tree

Why "Burn the Business Plan"?

Uniform business plans are like the common app for Venture Capital companies (built to get “unicorns” to a fast liquidity event). There is no place for a business plan when you are still searching for the right business model and value proposition for your idea. It's simply the wrong tool for the task and it might even lead to maximizing your risk of failure. Research agrees. If we trained Olympic athletes like entrepreneurs, they’d never win a medal. 

(1) This doesn’t mean “to not have” a plan

Business plans should be replaced by a more dynamic approach until you have sufficient evidence that your idea will work. Only then should you consider crafting a business plan. Start-ups are an intimate tango with customers, not a tight grip on a business plan. Dancing, not planning.  Because “no plan survives first contact with the enemy.” 

(2) Getting too granular too early = You risk wasting time

Keep your early ideas very rough and immediately test them. Gradually refine your ideas with increasing evidence. Innovation doesn’t come into its landing on schedule and hustle while you wait. Jump off a cliff and build an airplane on the way down. 

(3) Uncertainty and risk is at its maximum when you start out

You can’t reduce uncertainty with analytical thinking, so don’t waste your time perfecting your idea. Business plans are an attempt to bring order to a process that’s chaotic by nature. It’s really about getting out there, searching for evidence, and iterating.

(4) Selling an idea & plan to leadership = You risk getting locked-in

You are forced to execute an idea that is yet to be proven. If you want to change direction later on, it will be difficult to convince leadership because you sold them something else. Instead, sell them an opportunity and a rigorous process that will turn your idea into an executable business model by producing market evidence. Show them how this approach will minimize the risk of failure.

(5) Think of innovation as a call option on future performance

Limited downside with unlimited upside. Not of the ‘bet the company’ type but which open opportunities to see and potentially create the future.

I really enjoyed these “cold email” tips from An ideal cold email from you is .... 

TL;DR: Assume nobody wants to read your sh*t, be clear and specific.

How do you want to spend your days? 

I'd add taking my frenchie Spencer for a walk + spending “Garbage time” with my wife and daughter.