Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

Do the simple thing first (whiteboards don’t scale and that’s okay)

Tool: Do the simple thing first.

I always feel a little bit smarter after listening to Invest Like the Best. On this episode, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger talk about taking Instagram from an idea to an exit to successfully scaling it up in a large company to leaving it behind. (They also talk about what they’re up to now.)

They talk about the early days of running ads:

V1 of our auction system was literally a whiteboard with a calendar that was drawn in Sharpie. Basically maybe March 5th would say: Banana Republic, they’re running the ad that day. And in the morning the engineers look at and be like, all right, we got to make sure Banana Republic is running that day. Which on one hand is what we’d call Clown Town. But actually it was like a great example of doing the simple thing first.

If that ad system didn’t work, meaning people weren’t interested in buying those kinds of ads on Instagram, why would you have spent a year building the perfect auction model? And when it worked, then you go build the thing that lets thousands and thousands of different kinds of ads be running on Instagram at any given time.

It’s easy to forget how different Instagram was in the early days. Tags and things didn’t work. People posted to their mainf eed multiple times a day without considering that they might become excommunicated from society.

This was a good reminder to start with the simple thing first (or: do things that don’t scale) if you’re trying something new. It can be really easy to optimize prematurely.

Quick example from this blog: I spent entirely too much time trying to get WordPress to run locally to get these podcast summary cards in a box:

podcast-summary-card

I started thinking about how the template would work and whether or not I knew how to use custom fields in WordPress and a bunch of other stuff that would make these things more systematic.

Anyway, I ended up not being able to get WordPress running locally so I just went with a simpler solution by writing CSS inline. And I have a MarsEdit formatting shortcut to paste the markup into each post. For the podcast name, title, and episode links, I copy and paste them in like a farmer.

It’d be nice to write a script for this but it’s working right now. And it’s definitely not the bottleneck for me writing posts regularly.

An example disagreement (between very smart people)

I just bought Ray Dalio’s Principles. Well, a physical copy. I listened to the audiobook around when it first came out but after seeing the physical copy in store it definitely seemed worth re-visiting.

I wanted to pour a little bit of concrete over something I listened to on this episode by sharing it here.

Reid Hoffman has a lightning round question:

  • “Artificial intelligence fills you with hope or dread? Pick one.”

Ray Dalio picks dread.

They talk it through:

HOFFMAN: So by the way, in radical transparency, I actually have hope. And unfortunately just because of time, because I do want to get through the Lightning Round questions, to our next conversation we’ll go into the AI stuff a little bit more.

DALIO: But let me ask you the question: Do you agree with the principle I just said? In other words if… Lets just chat a minute, because this is invaluable because I’d love your opinion, ok?

This reminded me of What You Do is Who You Are  by Ben Horowitz1. Because Ray Dalio wrote a book on principles and using them for decision making. But then you can hear in this discussion that he really walks the walk and brings principles into the discussion.

Agree on principles and then work from there. Reid Hoffman then also explains the importance of considering context.

In any case, it’s good to hear two smart people discuss something they disagree on2. Dalio for dread, Reid for hope.

(Also, I made a page where I’ll try collecting lightning round questions, starting with this one.)

Leash yourself (to turn values into actions)

Check out the full notes for “What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture” by Ben Horowitz

Last week, I bought a physical copy of Ray Dalio’s Principles. I listened to the audiobook around when it was initially released but want to revisit it in text form. I want to come up with some set of principles to refer to and dig into on this blog. None will be original but the set and prioritization could be useful. A few that come to mind:

  • bias to action (instead of over-thinking, over-planning, and over-discussing)
  • it depends (but pick a side)
  • 80/20 (and 64/4)
  • easy and sustainable (to do hard things consistently)
  • get your reps in (or choose your favorite version of the ceramics professor story)
  • aim for daily (because your day to day adds up to your life)
  • listen, learn, and move (mental stillness through body movement and mental movement through physical stillness).

Something like that.

It’ll probably just end up being d.school principles with Tim Ferriss and Seth Godin mixed in. That could be fine.

Anyway, having those principles and values is useful, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how values would translate to action. Mostly because I finished reading Ben Horowitz’s book What You Do is Who You Are recently and he writes about creating “shocking rules”:

Here are the rules for writing a rule so powerful it sets the culture for many years:

It must be memorable. If people forget the rule, they forget the culture.

It must raise the question “Why?” Your rule should be so bizarre and shocking that everybody who hears it is compelled to ask, “Are you serious?”

Shocking rules turn company values into individual actions day to day.

On a personal level, you can have shocking rules to translate your own life values into action. And it helps to check the daily rules you have for yourself right now to see if they align to things you say you value.

I say I want to put health and fitness first. Some mornings I wake up, zombie walk to the couch and then get stuck looking at newsletters and deals on my phone. I’ve been trying to put a shocking rule in place: only use the phone when it’s charging on our entryway stand. (I learned about the technique in a Cal Newport post.) It’s like putting your less-present, auto scrolling self on a leash.

To put health first, I want to make movement the very first thing in my day. The workout I think I could do on most days would be:

  • 100 kettlebell swings
  • 10 kettlebell get-ups
  • 30 minute walk/jog/run

(You might recognize the 100 swings, 10 get-ups as Simple & Sinister.)

It really is pretty straightforward, but I’m still thinking about removing the friction involved in it. Sometimes I need to pack my bag to go or need to do some other things that aren’t movement and then I eventually get stuck to the couch scrolling away.

Find the medium that you’ll be most consistent in

Found this really inspiring. Matt Ragland talks about the importance of consistency in putting his channel together.

  • He tested out different mediums. He ended up focusing on video because of how much he enjoyed it creatively. He found he was way better at connecting to people on video than in podcasts or through text.
  • He didn’t fuss around on quality all that much. The time that it takes is way less than some of his friends. (He mentions a friend spending 30 hours for each video.) He knew that wouldn’t work for his own situation so he aimed for a system that helped him with stay consistent.

Over the past couple years (and over the past couple weeks, even) I’ve bounced around from trying to do audio, or text, or text and audio, or video, or timelapses, or a newsletter or every combination of those things. Now I’m trying to get back to good old blogging because it’s the place that lets me share with the least friction. (On this episode, Ragland mentions working the “consistency muscle”.)

I liked what Darrell (host of Copyblogger FM) shared: consistency will take you much farther than passion will.

I’m making up these numbers, but I’d say it’s worth the tradeoff to lower the quality, say, 30% if it results in being 300% more consistent.