SWLW #600: Hacking hard-work, Communication structures, and more.

Like always, sharing my best findings for the week. This week I'm celebrating 600(!) Fridays of doing what I love so much - reading, thinking and sharing with others to create value and hopefully inspire all of us to learn and grow in our lives and careers. 

 

This Week's Favorite

Why You Should Define Your Fears Instead of Your Goals (Video)
13 minutes read.

This is one of Tim Ferriss's best talks. The engine for excellence is figuring out how to set the right habits to push you forward to experiment and nurture a growth mindset. It captures so well the journey he took that made him one of the world's best interviewers.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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Culture

Tech Companies Solving Problems That Don’t Exist
1 minute read.

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

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Communication Structures
4 minutes read.

This powerful insight seems obvious and rare to find: "It can be tempting to think that you are only supposed to talk to people 'at the same level' as you, what some may call 'your peers'. Maybe one level up if it's important, but definitely not higher. This is the mistake. If you work in a high agency, high trust environment then you should be able to talk to whomever you need to get your job done. [...] If these sorts of actions are looked down upon (or discouraged) then your company has decided it values optics over impact."

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Gaming as Management Training
5 minutes read.

Given the progress we see with Generative AI in text, video, and images, I can imagine new simulators to effectively train managers. This post can show how games like DOTA can create short feedback loops to iterate on many of the skills managers need (even if it's only a partial set of skills). How do you see it? It's worth sharing this post with a few teammates and discussing.

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Why Now: Timing and Product Success
11 minutes read.

Asking "Why Now?" when building new (internal and external) products is one of the most powerful questions for understanding the market conditions to enable adoption and distribution. It helps users and customers connect emotionally to understand why the problems they're facing are big enough now to drive exploring solutions versus the status quo.

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Peopleware

Hacking Hard-Work
3 minutes read.

I love every word in this post as it really hits home for me: "And no this is not some post about smart work. I never understood smart work anyways. It assumes people are dumb and don't know how to approach problems from high leverage points. I am not sure if any of these people even exist when you are competing at a high level. [...] How can this programming be done? Well the key insight is you can bore yourself to a point that anything is enjoyable. Also you can gaslight yourself into making any mundane task feel grand. [...] Everyone has a different brain and how you programme this squishy thing will be personal to you. Just spend time with yourself. Introspect to read the documentation."

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On Making Mistakes
4 minutes read.

Learning to look at failures as a step on the way to long-term success is critical when building resilient teams with high trust between them: "When the Mercedes F1 Team was winning the championship several years in a row, I heard an interview with the team principal, Toto Wolff, in which he mentioned that he starts every team meeting by talking about his own mistakes. This lowers the bar - if leaders can openly admit their own mistakes, then everyone can. People are much more willing to admit mistakes if leaders set an example by doing so themselves."

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Why Is Business Writing So Dry?
3 minutes read.

Realizing that we need to unlearn much of what we were taught in school comes at some point in our career. Writing is one of these areas.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@AlexHormozi: The best time to start something is when things are hard and inconvenient. Otherwise, when things get hard and inconvenient in the future, you’ll assume that’s a reason you can stop.

@morganhousel: “If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism.” -- Kahneman
 


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.