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We’re just a leisurely afternoon (so what?)

From “The Dark Forest” by Cixin Liu:

Two centuries was far too short for any visible change to come to these rocky mountains. What was the human world like in the eyes of the mountains? Perhaps just something they saw on a leisurely afternoon. First, a few small living beings appeared on the plain. After a while, they multiplied, and after another while they erected structures like anthills that quickly filled the region.

My wife and I are finally hopping on the Euphoria train. One of the episodes has a few different lines about memory and high school and the legacy of it all.

I’m old enough now to see that you do just forget most of the stuff that happened in high school. There are some peak moments. Some of the friends you stay in touch with. A few you actually do still see regularly as adults.

It doesn’t make the time unimportant. It’s a high leverage point in life where a lot of your future beliefs are going to be shaped. Even if it’s by interactions with people you’ll never talk to again after graduation.

“Whenever I try to remember friends from high school, friends from college, or even just friends from five years ago, my memory always creates the illusion that we were together constantly, just like those kids on Saved by the Bell. However, this was almost never the case. Whenever I seriously piece together my past, I inevitably uncover long stretches where somebody who (retrospectively) seemed among my closest companions simply wasn’t around.” — Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman

Now, I’ve been reading a lot of “how to write on the internet” sort of stuff lately. There should always be a CTA. Even if you’re not selling something, you should at least give the reader some sort of action to take. If you tell a story, there should be an answer to the reader’s “so what?”

So what do you do if you can’t tie something to an action the reader can take? I don’t know. Maybe remember that we’re all just a leisurely afternoon to the mountains. And the mountains are a leisurely afternoon for a galaxy.

And then hit publish anyway.

Podcast Note | Leveling Up with Eric Siu: “2M Monthly Podcast Downloads, Selling to HubSpot, Twitter Growth, and Angel Investing with Sam Parr.”

  • Podcast
    Leveling Up with Eric Siu
  • Episode Title
    2M Monthly Podcast Downloads, Selling to HubSpot, Twitter Growth, and Angel Investing with Sam Parr
  • Episode links
    Apple Podcasts • Spotify

Some of my favorite points from the podcast:

  • Get your nut (whether it’s $20 million or not): Sam says he wanted to make enough money by 30 to not have to work again. Selling The Hustle to HubSpot got him there.
  • Podcasting can feel like a job (but that can be a good thing): Though My First Million can feel like (and in many ways is) a casual conversation between Sam and Shaan, but they do deliberately work to improve as podcasters. Sam says the actual recording part is short, but he thinks about the podcast all the time outside of that. Some of the off the cuff jokes are workshopped a little bit. Whatever they’re doing, it’s working.
  • Promote your things in the same media: Particularly with podcasts, it’s good to find ways to promote your podcasts on other podcasts. It’s hard to convert people across types of media.
  • Why Sam is learning about real estate: Tech companies need to continuously innovate and can be at risk long term. But he wants to get into investing in things that he can pass on to future children.
  • Read “How to Get Rich” and “Mastery”: To get very rich, you need to get very good at something. It’ll take some time, but it’s worth it.
  • Sam’s two types of audiobooks: Nonfiction learning material are for his walks. Fiction books are for falling asleep to at night.
  • Best recent purchase – one button camera setup: He spent a few thousand dollars to get a really good webcam and recording setup. One button and he’s ready to go.
  • Morning routine: Wake up at 6:30 AM (no phones in the bedroom), get coffee and read for one hour while taking notes, go for an hour long walk, then work, eat at noon, then around 4 to 6ish he’ll start an intense workout.

How Jony Ive sketches (and why fast is better)

Don’t let that idea get stuck in your head. I’m reading “Jony Ive” by Leander Kahny and he describes brainstorms with the team where everyone has their sketchbook and they sketch together for a few hours every week.

Weekly meetings ensure the design process is collaborative. Two or three times a week, Jony’s entire team gathers around the kitchen table for brainstorming sessions. All of the designers must be present. No exceptions. The sessions typically last for three hours, starting at nine or ten a.m.

But first, coffee.

The brainstorms begin with coffee. A couple of the designers play barista, making coffee for the group from a high-end espresso maker in the kitchen. Daniele De Iuliis, the Italian from the United Kingdom, is regarded as the coffee guru. “Danny D was the person who educated us all on coffee and grind and the color of the crema, how to properly do the milk, how temperature is important and all that stuff,” said Satzger, who was one of his keenest disciples.

Jony Ive sketching

How does Ive sketch? Fast.

He is a good at it, but emphasizes speed over detail. “He always wanted to get a thought down on paper so that people could understand it really quickly,” said Satzger. “Jony’s drawings were really sketchy, with a shaky hand. His drawing style was really interesting.”

Why thinking together works

Whipping the sketchbooks out means that everyone’s thinking is steered in the same direction week by week. But there’s still the freedom of each individual sketchbook. Go wild, but on the same idea. Then they’re able to store those sketchbooks to refer back to, compounding the knowledge week over week. In “The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain”, Annie Murphy Paul points out the power of staying in sync:

“Here the function of shared attention is not so much the expert instruction of a novice but rather the maintenance of a mutual store of information and impressions. We feel compelled to continuously monitor what our peers are paying attention to, and to direct our own attention to those same objects. (When the face of everyone on the street is turned skyward, we look up too.) In this way, our mental models of the world remain in sync with those of the people around us.”

No myth: you can put ideas in other people’s heads

You don’t need Leo and crew to do a dream heist to implant an idea in someone’s head. You just need a pencil. In “Every Tool’s a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It”, Adam Savage describes this power:

“In my experience, the ability to take an idea from your own mind and transfer it to the mind of another person is intoxicating. It is a kind of creative empowerment that makes all your other crazy ideas feel maybe not so crazy. And the fact that you only need a pencil and a piece of paper to make it happen, that is most empowering of all.”

The next time you find yourself fumbling to describe an idea to someone, try sketching it out instead. If they think the idea still stinks, at least you’ll know you were talking about the same thing.

When should you do something (even if it might be wrong)?

During “Only one way to find out…” moments.

When you (1) aren’t sure if it’s wrong and (2) it’s unclear what should be done, it could be worth trying and failing anyway.

From “Articulating Design Decisions” by Tom Greever:

After a few seconds of agony, he yelled to me, “Well, do something! Even if it’s wrong!” This was actually a common phrase of my dad’s. The sentiment is that sometimes it’s not clear what we should do, but it’s almost always better to do something rather than nothing.

  • Shaan Puri talks about something his dad taught him: movement first, direction after that. Janis Ozlin worked with Shaan on illustrations for his power writing course and says the thing that stuck out most was how Shaan gets moving quickly on things.
  • Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush teach their Ship 30 for 30 students the importance of practicing writing in full loops. If you’re going to get moving quickly, shrink the loop to a size where you can complete it regularly. Feedback on published pieces allows writers to begin learning which things are working and which aren’t.
  • David Perell suggests turning to audio to keep moving on an idea. The best way is to share an idea with multiple people in different conversations. You’ll get good reactions to the idea or a very high resolution image of boredom. And if you don’t have someone to talk to, you can use a tool like Otter to talk through your own ideas. This will prevent you from over-editing as you think through a piece.

Start doing something and your dad will yell at you if it’s the wrong thing. Nice, tight feedback loop.

Easy to assemble (vs. fully assembled)

From “Effortless” by Greg Mckeown:

It’s striking to me that Hartman spent months trying to make each step in the online ordering process simpler but never thought to try removing steps to make the process itself simpler. There is a huge difference between the two. No matter how simple the step, it’s still easier to take no step.

It’s similar to putting things away vs. throwing things away when you try to de-clutter your home.

No matter how organized you get things when putting things away, a larger mental weight is lifted if you actually get rid of the stuff altogether.

I’m constantly shuffling things around to get my bookshelf in order and to have my electronics in the right bins. But the best place to gather things is into a garbage bag to take to Goodwill or the trash.

Auditing your time works similarly.

After you write down all the stuff that you do, you have a giant pile of stuff. You can try to organize it into adjacent buckets. But the more effective thing would be to start by just looking at which things you can remove altogether.

Can you simplify some busy, repetitive part of your day into the equivalent of a 1-click ordering system? The end result is a package at your doorstep. What steps before that aren’t necessary.

And are there hidden steps?

I’m happy to manually type my credit card number into Herman Miller’s website if it means I don’t have to assemble the chair after receiving the package. They come fully assembled.

How to develop your own style (even if you’re not a young Jony Ive)

From “Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products” by Leander Kahney:

“As for aesthetics, there were influences, but the Tangerine group never clung to a style for its own sake. “It was important for all of us, including Jony, that we were designing things for a reason,” said Grinyer.”
“Jony was interested in getting things right and fit for a purpose. He was completely interested in humanizing technology. What something should be was always the starting point for his designs. He had the ability to remove, or ignore, how any product currently is, or how an engineer might say it must be. He could go back to basics on any product design, or user interface design. And we all shared this similar philosophy at Tangerine. It was not so much due to our formal design education, but more a reaction to seeing the ways that other people were designing.”

Sometimes it’s too early to develop your own style. Sometimes you definitely don’t want to use someone else’s style. The important thing is learning to be deliberate with the style you’re using.

  • Paul Kunkel, author of AppleDesign, described Ive as a chameleon: During his agency days at Tangerine, he was not trying to exert or develop his own design signature.
  • Ali Abdaal starts and stops with titles (for when you do want to have your own style): He’s said that one technique he’ll use when researching for video ideas is to look at titles of popular videos. He’ll try to think of how he can do a slight twist on the title and do his own video without watching the video itself. That way he’s keeping his own style in place.
  • Elon Musk starts with first principles: If you’re coming into an established industry, say space or car manufacturing, there are some constraints that might exist for reasons other than physics. Musk has talked about how he starts with first principles: what order of atoms would provide the optimal result? Ok, now what are the limits to getting there? They might be legal, expenses, material, etc. But if it’s possible with physics, there might be a way.
  • David Perell provides a sequence: imitate then innovate: First you follow trends, then you’re aware but avoid them, then you can set them.

Perell points to our fear of plagiarism:

The problem is that our tormented fear of plagiarism has clenched its claws around the things that are actually good for you. Out of excessive trepidation, we’ve lost touch with the subtle, but important distinction between stealing other people’s work without giving them credit (which is obviously a bad thing) and mirroring the style or values of a writer you admire (which should be praised and promoted).

Learn to apply elements of other people’s styles into your own work. Do it over and over. More elements, more people. Do it over and over and over and over.

Now you’ve got your own.