Trevor McKendrick - Why you'll never lose anything in Japan

Hello friends,

Here’s a favorite quote of mine to start your week:

“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be.” - Winston Churchill

Trevor

The social downsides of masks (article)

Nodding my head the whole time.

Think: with masks on in socializing situations, were you ever surprised after talking to someone for a while and feeling like you knew them - and then seeing what they looked like once they took their mask off?

That delta in how you felt about them before vs after they removed their mask is something to pay attention to.

Scott Alexander’s list of Ukraine links & thoughts (article)

Published 6 days ago aka it’s already totally out of date, obviously.

Taking Todos and Moving Up the Y Axis (article)

A Fred Wilson summary of a Dick Costolo interview from 2013.

“Dick's meta point here is your job as a manager is to give people direction not to make them feel good. And if you, in an effort to make them happier, take on a bunch of work that you shouldn't, you will be less effective too.”

Basically: if you’re managing someone & by the end of your 1:1 you have a bunch of new todos, you’re not being effective.

Why it’s almost impossible to lose anything in Japan (article)

I personally experienced this - my friend lost his phone in Tokyo on a group trip, and miracle of miracles we were able to get it back.

I did an Instagram story here if that’s interesting.

It helped us a ton that he had Find My iPhone turned on - but even then turned out to be a bit of an adventure and wouldn’t have been remotely possible in most places outside of Japan.

Low Expectations (article)

“Charlie Munger was born in 1924. The richest man in the world that year was John D. Rockefeller, whose net worth equaled about 3% of GDP, which would be something like $700 billion in today’s world…. But make a short list of things that did not exist in Rockefeller’s day…”

“If you’re honest with yourself I don’t think you would trade Rockefeller’s $700 billion in the early 1900s for an average life in 2022.”

And Finally…

You can share the newsletter using your referral code with any of these links: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, or email.

You can also grab the URL by itself here

Have a great week!

Trevor