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Describe Your Restaurant in a Single Sentence (Dave Chang and “Perennial Seller”)

Why does a single sentence matter?

That’s about all the time you’ve got to explain something.

One sentence for this post: Dave Chang says you need to be able to explain your restaurant quickly and it reminded me of something from Ryan Holiday’s book “Perennial Seller”

I’ll start with the Dave Chang part. In the first few episodes (The Pre-opening Diaries) of his new podcast (iTunes, Stitcher), Dave Chang talks about Majordomo in conversations with Bill Simmons. They were recorded a few months ago so it was before Majordomo opened and actually even before Ugly Delicious came out on Netflix.

Oh yeah, the particular bit about having a sentence is in the first episode. (It starts at 14:52)

Bill: Do you feel like the food has to be… the customer can describe it in a sentence? Or the customer will just tell a friend “The food’s great just go there.” Does it have to have a brand I guess is my point.

Dave: Yes. I can expand upon this much more. It’s important that you can explain what you’re doing in a sentence. Or two sentences, tops.

“I’m opening up a steakhouse.” That’s clear.

(In “Creative Quest”, Questlove writes about the importance of deciding what you’re not. I wrote about it here. Dave Chang does not want Majordomo described as “It’s a Korean restaurant.”)

Dave Chang talks about knowing a dessert was bad and not serving it at a test dinner Bill Simmons was at. I know this drawing doesn’t look like him but I’m going to go ahead and serve this up anyway.

In Perennial Seller, Ryan Holiday writes about making creative work with longevity. He also suggests being able to explain it in a sentence. (Then a paragraph and then a page.)

When you’re starting out, it helps you re-align. You can’t move toward a vision if it’s not clear. One sentence is clear.

Then, when you release it, you can check the results against your initial intent. From Perennial Seller:

The most important part of the process is comparing the results of the exercise against the product we’ve made. Does your one-pager really describe what makes your screenplay worth producing? Would your one sentence capture an investor’s attention in an elevator?

In Dave Chang’s case, the investor is instead that friend you’re trying to pick dinner with. If you can’t describe it in a sentence, how will other people describe it to their friends?

If you need a few prompts, you can start with these questions from Perennial Seller: (1) Who is this for? (2) Who is this not for? (3) Why is it special? (4) What will it do for them? (5) Why should anyone care?

So what would a good sentence be for Dave Chang? From The Dave Chang Show (starts at 16:30):

“I think the best way when someone says ‘Hey, what kind of food are you serving?’ or your friend and goes to you and says ‘Let’s go out to dinner Thursday night, where do you want to go?’ Let’s say ‘We want to go to Majordomo’ they’re like ‘What do they serve?’ it’s like, ‘It’s hard to describe, but you want to go. It’s awesome. I don’t know how to talk about it. It’s awesome.'”

If you’re opening your first restaurant, your first sentence should be as clear as “it’s a steakhouse”. If you’re writing your first novel and expect it to be published and sold, have a genre in mind. Genres become that because a collection of people decided they like some particular collection of things.

If you’ve had success with that, then go ahead and start breaking the rules. Be bold, but understand the challenge. From Perennial Seller:

But you need to know that this will likely make your job harder— and you’ll need to compensate for it in various ways during the creative process, in your packaging and positioning, and certainly in your marketing.

Dave Chang has the career capital to aim for “I don’t know but it’s awesome.” He knows he can deliver on the “it’s awesome” part. He’s done it before. Sometimes he’s failed trying to repeat it. He’s learned from those failures.

He’s sharing his thoughts on all that (and plenty more) on The Dave Chang Show.

Go check that out. I’m gonna go work on my one sentence.

(“Active Recall is sort of like those good podcasts attached to a good blog but instead replace ‘good’ with ‘A for effort’ and then mix in a little…”)

Handle Your Distractions (Especially if the distraction is Mr. Fuji)

You’re in the zone. You’re dominating. There’s even a photographer here to take a photo of your performance. He’s getting pretty close.


Okay his camera just exploded in your face. Not great.

Have you ever felt distracted? Of course you have. Then you’ve also wanted to feel less distracted.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity has something for you. It’s comprehensive for handling items in every horizon of your life. Even if you don’t start using the entire system, you’ll find something valuable that you can apply pretty much right away.

Work toward trusting your calendar. Then you’ll have a bucket to put things in and truly get them out of your head. One step closer to a mind like water.

1.) Reduce distractions (and get closer to a mind like water)

Let’s oversimplify your mind really quick. Let’s say you’ve got 100% of your attention available. You can put that attention in two categories: focus or distraction. At any moment, you can only have one thing to focus on, but an infinite number of things to distract you.

You can practice shifting the intensity of focus. Things like meditation help. But it takes practice.

Mind like water. Skin of a hot dog.

Instead, weaken the distraction. Get rid of some. Take their intensity away. From Getting Things Done:

It is possible. There is a way to get a grip on it all, stay relaxed, and get meaningful things done with minimal effort, across the whole spectrum of your life and work. You can experience what the martial artists call a “mind like water” and top athletes refer to as the “zone,” within the complex world in which you’re engaged. In fact, you have probably already been in this state from time to time.

You might call it Hulking up.

2.) Got a minute? How about two? Okay take care of something.

Who knows what else was on Hulk Hogan’s mind that day. Maybe he was thinking about the groceries he’d have to pick up after the match. Maybe he was reminiscing about the 80s. Maybe he was thinking about his future in Hollywood.

Start with the easy things. From Getting Things Done:

If the next action can be done in two minutes or less, do it when you first pick the item up.

…

The rationale for the two-minute rule is that it’s more or less the point where it starts taking longer to store and track an item than to deal with it the first time it’s in your hands—in other words, it’s the efficiency cutoff. If the thing’s not important enough to be done, _throw it away_.

Here’s a tip for some quick momentum: Clean a drawer or do the dishes. It will never take up so much time that you regret doing it.

Build the habit of getting small wins in.

Then you can move on to the hard things? Wait, what are the hard things?

3.) Get rid of some good things (so you can focus on the great things)

It’s easy to stop doing clearly bad things. Well, not that easy, but at least you know that you should. It’s harder to stop doing good things because you don’t initially have a reason to. (But they’re taking time up from you working on the truly great things.)

The strongest distractions are things worth focusing on, just not right at this moment.

It’s also probably a bigger thing that needs to be broken down into smaller parts. So how do you handle that? Ask a key question: What’s the next action?

From Getting Things Done:

What’s the Next Action? This is the critical question for anything you’ve captured; if you answer it appropriately, you’ll have the key substantive thing to organize. The “next action” is the next physical, visible activity that needs to be engaged in, in order to move

The more you practice this, the better you’ll be at figuring out the next action for any project. If you schedule it and trust your calendar, you’ll be able to take it off your mind.

A little less in your head to distract you. A little more focus.

You’ll be able to get things done.

Summing up:

  • Work toward a mind like water. Get rid of all those little distractions bouncing around in your head.
  • Does it take two minutes or less? Take care of it now.
  • Ask, “What’s the next action?” Figure out the next action.

You’ve been practicing your leg drop for months. But today just isn’t going well. You’re getting dominated. It’s not looking good. But you took care of everything else so you can focus on the task at hand.

You duck.

Wax on. Wax off. Leg drop time.

The best backpack for the gym (Spoiler: it’s the GORUCK GR1)

Tim Ferriss often asks his guests this question:

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

Okay so I’m not one of his guests, and it’s not $100 or less, but if I were one of his guests I’d say “It’s not $100 or less… but the GORUCK GR1 has been my favorite purchase of the past year. I use it every day.”

Note: GORUCK links on this post are affiliate links. (I really do use the backpack every day!)

A few months before buying a GR1, I decided I needed a backpack. I also decided not to buy a GR1. Instead, I got The North Face’s Big Shot. I loved it when it was on my back. Really comfortable. But there were a few too many things that irritated me when it wasn’t on my back.

It was top heavy so it didn’t sit up right. I had to lean it against a wall forward so the straps hang out if I lean it in the hallway. I also had to hold it up when I was packing it.

There might cheaper bags that would fill my needs, but I couldn’t find one.

Looks-wise, the GR1 is clean. It doesn’t even have the GORUCK logo anywhere on its exterior. The bag is the brand. While reading about the bag, I learned the phrase tacticool—almost always used disparagingly. Most bags with the same functionality of the GR1 end up a little too far in tacticool territory.

It stands vertically on its own. This might not be important at all for you. It probably wouldn’t be important for me if I didn’t use it as a gym bag. It can stand up in the locker room while I pack and unpack it.

It opens like a suitcase. Even more helpful if I’m just unpacking the entire thing. This helps a lot at the grocery store. Again, this also might not be an important use case for you. But just know that if you’re looking for the intersection of gym bag and grocery bag, it’s going to make you so happy.

Ok so sometimes it’s too much space. This may have been when I decided to get the GORUCK Bullet.

It has the right amount of pockets (for me). All of this is subjective, of course. But this might be the most subjective thing. I’ve read often that people find it doesn’t have enough different compartments.A common answer I’ve seen is that you use attachments and things to customize it. I didn’t do that. I find the three pockets enough.

  1. The small inner pocket at the top: holds things I use frequently like pens and chargers.
  2. The large webbed inner pocket: holds the hodgepodge things I don’t use often.
  3. The outer pocket: holds stuff I jam in there when I forget to put it inside and am on the go. This is usually a notebook or pen.

I’ve had backpacks with a bunch of different pockets. It’s great for that first day of school feeling where you’ve got a place for everything and everything in its place.

By day 4, everything is out of place. I don’t want to have too many places to look for things.

One thing I miss is having a water bottle slot on the outside.

Oh yeah, the laptop compartment.
GORUCK offers a different backpack that’s $100 cheaper which swaps the laptop compartment in the back for an embroidered logo in the front.

I considered getting that, figuring the weighted plate slot on the inside of the backpack could hold a laptop. It actually does hold a laptop pretty well (sometimes I carry a work and personal laptop with me) but it’s harder to pull out on the go.

Like they say on the site, if you’ll be carrying a laptop regularly, get the GORUCK GR1.

Be like LeBron (and take a walk)

Five seconds left.

You’re dribbling up the court. Will you have enough energy?

Lebron does. But how? Well, he walks. Kind of a lot. From “Cavaliers are surviving in the playoffs despite the dilemma of LeBron James’ rest” (ESPN):

It manifests itself in many ways. For example, during free throws, James will often walk to the other end of the floor. It saves him having to run when possession changes. He also at times will take himself out of an offensive play and stand on the wing, knowing he needs a breather.

There’s a book about everything. There’s a great book about managing your energy, even if work means mostly sitting all day. From The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz:

In most jobs, the physical body has been completely cut off from the performance equation. In reality, physical energy is the fundamental source of fuel, even if our work is almost completely sedentary.

First step to improving your energy if you sit all day: don’t sit all day.

In Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans explain the importance of energy:

Nowadays, many of us are knowledge workers, and we use our brains to do the heavy lifting. The brain is a very energy-hungry organ. Of the roughly two thousand calories we consume a day, five hundred go to running our brains.

They also suggest tracking activities and ranking them by how positively (1) engaging and (2) energizing they are.

They have a great example of what to avoid: arguing deeply to prove a point might be very very engaging but it creates a lot of negative energy.

You design your life by designing your days, so plan for your peaks and valleys. Create deeper valleys by deliberately resting then you can experience bigger peaks when you need them.

And if you happen to be very good at basketball, you can rip the Raptors hearts out year after year after year.

It’s okay to be bored (and even worth practicing)

You’re already thinking of other things to click to.

Resist the urge.

I’m already thinking of what newsletters might be sitting in my inbox. I’ll try to resist the urge.

Or, as Cal Newport suggests in Deep Work: embrace boredom.

If your goal is to focus deeply in your work, you’re going to hit walls. They can be boring. If, in the rest of your life, you grab your phone the moment you feel even a twinge of boredom, then that urge will appear when you hit a lull in your work.

Instead, build your mental muscle of focus

For regular muscular strength, you can (1) have focused workout sessions and also (2) get a few reps in throughout the day.

There are a few different terms for getting reps in throughout the day, but “greasing the groove” has always stuck for me. You lower the intensity but increase the frequency. If you want to increase your pull-ups, do an easy set every couple hours. You never go to failure.

Applying that to your mental muscle, you have a lot of small opportunities throughout the day to embrace boredom. In line? Don’t grab your phone. You just woke up? Don’t grab your phone. In between sets in your actual workout? Don’t grab your phone.

The volume will add up. It probably already has, in the bad way. That reflex to check your phone has built up over time. Now you’re going to slowly turn that ship around.

In Deep Work, Cal Newport explains the danger of the frequency of distraction:

It’s instead the constant switching from low-stimuli/high-value activities to high-stimuli/low-value activities, at the slightest hint of boredom or cognitive challenge, that teaches your mind to never tolerate an absence of novelty.

Given 20 minutes, consider these two scenarios:

  • (A) You schedule a 20 minute block with a hard stop to indulge in a distraction
  • (B) 20 times randomly throughout the day, you take a minute to scroll through your social media feed.

Scenario (A) is better for preparing your mind to focus, but make sure to follow the distinct hard stop.

Unfortunately, a lot of us are in a different scenario:

  • (C) 60 times randomly throughout the day you take 20 seconds to look at like 2 new things and 5 things you already saw maybe 4 minutes ago.

Now let’s think about the focused workout session

Let’s take a pretty common plan: lift weights 3 days a week. Your goal is to work your muscles hard for 30-60 minutes.

Cal Newport has a similar suggestion to work your mental muscle. He calls it productive meditation:

The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally—walking, jogging, driving, showering—and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem.

If you’ve done mindfulness meditation, you’ll be familiar with giving attention to your attention. With mindfulness, if you notice that you’re thinking about anything, you gently bring your attention back to your breath.

With productive meditation, you bring it back to whatever problem you’re trying to solve. Try outlining something in your head. If you need time to think of something, take a walk to think about it.

The point isn’t only to solve that problem. It’s to practice sitting with a problem through the lulls. If you hit a wall, don’t just walk away from it. You recognize that wall. You’ve seen the good things that sit on the other side of it.

To sit deeply with a problem, take it for a walk. (And leave your phone behind.)