SWLW #545: Tricking your brain into learning more, Thinking Fast and Slopes, and more.

Heya,

As always, below you can read my best findings for the week.
 

This Week's Favorite

​​The Super Mario Effect - Tricking Your Brain Into Learning More (Video)
15 minutes read.

Mark Rober's talk is so inspiring on so many levels. I watched multiple videos of him building crazy things (look him up on Youtube), e.g. nerf guns, t-shirt cannon, and so many more. Thinking about life as "The Super Mario Effect," removing the mental penalty for failing, is a powerful mindset. Mark writes, "shifting the focus from falling into pits to saving the princess, to stick with a task and learn more."

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Culture

ChatGPT Is Like...
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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Thinking Fast and Slopes
8 minutes read.

Dror Poleg with another eye-opening article worth understanding and acting on: "We live in a networked world where power law distributions are popping up everywhere. [...] We live in a world where low-probability outcomes play a growing role. [...] This is true for individuals and companies, and it is true for whole countries and societies. We need to push into the tails of the distribution in both directions: Brace ourselves for unimaginable turbulence and encourage bold, crazy, optimistic bets."

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Paul Graham Wrote: "I Finally Got Being a Good Startup Founder Down to Two Words: Relentlessly Resourceful." What Are the Best Examples You've Seen of This, With Your Own Startup or Others? (Thread)
3 minutes read.

Being relentlessly resourceful is a trait I expect all leaders to show evidence for. For some positions, you expect to see at the top of the range (e.g. c-level), given the chaos and uncertainty you must act in. I liked Danimal and SFineReally's responses in this thread. Which examples can you think of?

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How to Succeed With a Startup (Video)
16 minutes read.

Sam Altman (OpenAI's CEO) is one of the greatest minds and CEOs of our time. While still not famous as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk, within the next couple of years, he'll be in that category and a name everyone will know (not only in tech). I recommend listening to his talk and then hearing more of his interviews to get a glimpse into his thoughts. I still remember his post from a few years back, "The days are long but the decades are short," thinking that a 30-year-old writing like this would be unstoppable.

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Peopleware

Climbing the Wrong Hill
4 minutes read.

Chris Dixon writes a blog post we should share with people still early in their career, feeling trapped in the immediate uncertainty of "What should I do?": Life is not linear. Try different things that currently feel energizing and exciting, and surround yourself with energized and inspiring individuals. Give it at least two years to let yourself find a path to show significant value. As you iterate on your role, the value you create, and your learnings from this journey, never compromise on your values and behavior.

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Be a Thermostat, Not a Thermometer
6 minutes read.

"If you’ve contributed to a big shift in the temperature by creating or escalating an awkward or tense situation, you have an opportunity to own your role as the thermostat here. Because if you never acknowledge it, you’re going to risk developing a forever-antagonistic relationship with them." -- Lara Hogan wrote a post that encapsulates so well a critical responsibility of us as leaders - learning to adjust the mood and energy of the team. This requires us to be more balanced in our own skin, so we'll have enough mental capacity to be open to listen and invest in areas our team needs us to.

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When You Plateau, So Does Your Company: A Founder's Guide to Expanding Your Comfort Zone
7 minutes read.

The "Exposure Ladders" section is a great way to think about setting the stage for building a growth roadmap. It would be useful to have multiple dimensions of it to create well-rounded thinking and knowledge over time. Use this post by Casey Rosengren to structure a roadmap for yourself as a leader or for a teammate you want to see taking a step forward in their career.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@farbood: Like a shadow, passing over objects, we feel time

@copyconstruct: A lot of engineers have spent the previous decade working on what I call “zero interest rate projects”. Fancy projects that brought no discernible benefit to the company, but still looked impressive from a technical perspective.



p.s. if you're interested in joining SWLW's Slack channel, simply reply to this email and let me know. If you're leading a team, consider writing your Manager README (it's free) or getting my e-book and interviews Leading Snowflakes: The New Engineering Manager's Handbook. You can also support me by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️




Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.