Highlights on mattmcq.me

Educated by Tara Westover

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Mother did her makeup every morning, but if she didn’t have time she’d apologize all day, as if by not doing it, she had inconvenienced everyone.

The other girls rarely spoke to me, but I loved being there with them. I loved the sensation of conformity. Learning to dance felt like learning to belong. I could memorize the movements and, in doing so, step into their minds, lunging when they lunged, reaching my arms upward in time with theirs. Sometimes, when I glanced at the mirror and saw the tangle of our twirling forms, I couldn’t immediately discern myself in the crowd.

I was fifteen and I felt it, felt the race I was running with time. My body was changing, bloating, swelling, stretching, bulging. I wished it would stop, but it seemed my body was no longer mine. It belonged to itself now, and cared not at all how I felt about these strange alterations, about whether I wanted to stop being a child, and become something else.

never again would I allow myself to be made a foot soldier in a conflict I did not understand.

The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

“What’s a savage?” he said. “It’s someone who doesn’t bother to look around and see that he can change the world.”

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

One of the gifts of being a writer is that it gives you an excuse to do things, to go places and explore. Another is that writing motivates you to look closely at life, at life as it lurches by and tramps around.

E. L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard.

Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend. What people somehow (inadvertently, I’m sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here—and, by extension, what we’re supposed to be writing.

Still, the moment I walk in and smell those old people again, and find them parked in the hallways like so many cars abandoned by the side of the road, I start begging God not to let me end up like this. But God is not a short-order cook, and these people were once my age. I bet they used to beg God not to let them end up as they have.

Of course, there will always be more you could do, but you have to remind yourself that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antidote for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass—seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one.

She said it was once again that business of comparing my insides to other people’s outsides. She said to go ahead and feel the feelings. I did. They felt like shit.

(Who was it that said, “A critic is someone who comes onto the battlefield after the battle is over and shoots the wounded”?

A big heart is both a clunky and a delicate thing; it doesn’t protect itself and it doesn’t hide.

And I don’t think you have that kind of time either. I don’t think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won’t be good enough at it, and I don’t think you have time to waste on someone who does not respond to you with kindness and respect. You don’t want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can’t fill up when you’re holding your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water—just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness. The emptiness destroys enough writers without the help of some friend or spouse.

A sober friend once said to me, “When I was still drinking, I was a sedated monster. After I got sober, I was just a monster.”

Truth, or reality, or whatever you want to call it is the bedrock of life. A black man at my church who is nearing one hundred thundered last Sunday, “God is your home,” and I pass this on mostly because all of the interesting characters I’ve ever worked with—including myself—have had at their center a feeling of otherness, of homesickness. And it’s wonderful to watch someone finally open that forbidden door that has kept him or her away. What gets exposed is not people’s baseness but their humanity. It turns out that the truth, or reality, is our home.

The Overstory by Richard Powers

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The best and easiest way to get a forest to return to any plot of cleared land is to do nothing—nothing at all, and do it for less time than you might think.

What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.

Go for a Walk

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 19 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/09/happiness-walking-pilgrimage/620075/

The Dalai Lama likes to say that each of us is “one of seven billion.” By this, he does not mean that you are insignificant or just like everyone else. Rather, he encourages all of us to zoom out from our narrow, earthbound perspective on my life, my work, my relationships, my money.

Interpretations of the Term “Social Media” in 1996

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/interpretations-of-the-term-social-media-in-1996

Sharing your opinions with people who don’t care. In 2021, this is called “Twitter,” but, in 1996, this was just called “marriage.”

Networking Advice on How to Become Insanely Well-Connected

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 12 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://review.firstround.com/how-to-become-insanely-well-connected

a thesis on networking he’s adhered to ever since: The best way to be highly influential is to be human to everyone you meet.

Managers: Compassion and Accountability Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://hbr.org/2021/08/managers-compassion-and-accountability-arent-mutually-exclusive

Instead, deal with underperformance directly. If someone isn’t able to do their job according to expectations, understand why and talk through, together, how you can address the root causes. Hirsh suggests you consider: “Is it their motivation? Is it stress? Is it the workflow? Is it a lack of training? Where are things actually hurting here? And then focus in on that.” Hill suggests that you consider the team as a whole. If the entire team is struggling to be productive, then you’ve got to address these issues at the group level, not just the individual one.

Questions for Technology

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://austinkleon.com/2021/08/16/questions-for-technology/

I tend these days to err on the side of technologies that have been around for hundreds of years, technologies like paper and pencils. The fact of the matter is, McLuhan was right: “We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”

A Carnival of Losses by Donald Hall

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

You are old when someone mentions an event two years in the future and looks embarrassed.

In your eighties you are invisible. Nearing ninety you hope nobody sees you. At nineteen you were six foot two. At ninety-one you will be two foot six.

I drank whiskey because I was depressed, and whiskey made sure I stayed depressed.

There was an old hermit named Dave Who kept a dead whore in his cave. He said, “I’ll admit I’m a bit of a shit, But think of the money I save.”

In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Those were comfortable fires, not urgent ones.

Life Undercover by Amaryllis Fox

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

“Noblesse Oblige.”

The idea that our highest duty is not to follow the law but to do whatever we know to be right fills me with calm and hope and awe. This is the Berlin Wall rusher and the man from Tiananmen Square. This is the Russian fruit seller wheeling her cart into the grind of oncoming tanks.

Rise by Patty Azzarello

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It’s important to realize that not only do you have permission, but also as a leader you are expected to be able to deal with an overwhelming workload and not be overwhelmed. That’s the job.

The right kind of productive selfishness and laziness motivates and allows you to take care of yourself so you are in an even better position to lead and help others.

KEY INSIGHT: Welcome to being a leader. This is your job. Your job is not to deliver work when everything lines up to support you. Your job is to get the most important stuff done despite everything that lines up to kill you. Your job is to deal with the overload and the lack of personal support and to negotiate room, keep your boss and stakeholders at bay, and keep your team on board. This is indeed one of the hardest things leaders deal with and therefore one of the key things that sets the most successful leaders apart.

There is a well-tested marketing principle that says that for your audience to understand your message well enough to act on it, they must hear or see your message seven times. And for every one time they consciously see it or hear it, they have to be exposed to it three times, thus, the “21-Times Rule.”

It’s important to note that the people who are getting ahead are not the ones who are burned out, used up, and pissed off. Most of them are kind of OK.

Don’t assess your life or yourself when you are in a bad mood! There is no upside and no useful information will come of it. You are not [lazy, stupid, ineffective, unlikable, unattractive, slow, incompetent—wherever your mind goes]. You are in a slump. Wait till you are in a better mood—you’ll get a better and more accurate assessment.

If you are known as being someone who can always take on more work personally, guess what? You will keep getting more work. After all, why would anyone be motivated to promote you and lose their workhorse?

When you are a workhorse, people value you for your work output; they don’t value you. They don’t care how hard you work; they only care that the work gets done. Your company can absorb an unlimited amount of work from you.

Here are some ideas for what you should be focusing on as a leader at the right level to work on the business. Build a plan to drive the overall strategy for your team and its contribution to the business. Look for game-changing opportunities. Clarify Ruthless Priorities. Tune everyone’s workload to ensure that they deliver on the most important things. Ensure that there is strategic alignment of your team, peers, and boss with priorities and values. Assess your organization’s fitness for what it needs to do, and make changes, train, and/or upgrade talent where necessary. Create systems and frameworks to execute, track, and measure the work so you can feel comfortable that you know what is getting done without diving into the details. See also chapter 7, Delegate or Die. Create a specific learning agenda for your team, such as understanding the financial realities of the business, getting closer to customers, or competitive awareness and positioning. Develop talent. Help your team become better leaders and support them. Focus on the development of their top talent. Improve communication inside and outside your organization. Find ways to steadily reduce the cost of things you do every year to make room for new things. See also chapter 8, Better with Less. Continually make connections outside your direct organization to create positive visibility for your team and create a broader base of support.

A good checkpoint for yourself is to make sure that you are never the one to carry detail up. Part of working at the right level is always to turn detail into higher-value information. This may happen through summaries or abstractions, or it may happen by picking out one compelling, detailed example that tells the whole story to the next level up. But if you simply get detail from your team and then you share it with your boss, you are working at the wrong level.

Let’s start with the basic math. If you have ten people working for you, you will create way more value for the company by developing ten people to step up and deliver at your level than by adding one more person—you—to step down to deliver at their level.

Don’t think of delegating as just giving work to other people; think about it as making sure the highest-value work gets done at the right levels.

You don’t need to learn how to deal with the worry; you need to eliminate the need to worry!

If you prevent your people from getting better than you are at their tasks, you are failing as a leader.

The way to build trust is to select your Ruthless Priorities, as we discussed in chapter 2, and stick to them until they are finished. Then pick the next ones. Sticking to a strategy, actually getting stuff done, and actually making progress is a huge trust builder. People love to finish things.

Do this now. With each of your reports, say the following: “As your manager I am going to worry about what matters to you. When I worry about you, what should I worry about?”

I wish I had learned this much earlier in my career—building credibility should be a specific item on your task list. Good work does not stand on its own. Delivering results alone does not ensure you will get recognized and rewarded. It’s sad but true. You need to take it upon yourself to make your work visible and make it count.

If you need to educate people about what you do, by definition, you are not relevant.

I have spoken with many talented people who are surprised to learn that consistently doing excellent work and flawlessly delivering on their job description does not make them a top-ranked employee. Doing your job well, as defined, keeps you from getting fired. What makes you stand out is finding additional ways to add value to the business over and above what is in your job description. Otherwise, you are just one more person doing what is expected of them.

If you take away only two ideas about brand, here’s what they should be: 1. Behaviors 2. Consistency

It’s better to be consistently bad than inconsistently good!

What do you think it takes to be good at this job? What do you think is the hardest part? What is the most challenging issue? What corporate issue, rule, or program is most annoying to you? What business drivers do you react to first? What business drivers do you affect directly? What is the biggest problem you have overcome? How do you set goals for your team? How do you find stars and identify low performers? What do you seek to learn about the competition? Where do you invest to add value or extra quality? Where do you cut cost to drive efficiency? How do you communicate with your organization? What are the most important peer relationships? What has worked well in leading a team of this size? What has not worked? What would you do differently if you had the chance? What best practice have you discovered that you can share? How does your organization deal with changes in course? How do you process direct feedback from customers? How do you interact with the sales force? What does the CFO bug you about? What are the things you would like to fix but can’t get to? What elements of what you do drive revenue, cost, and profitability? What elements of what you do, do other organizations depend upon? What do you believe you should stop doing but are forced to continue? What do you believe you should start doing but can’t get support for?

Backing off never makes your performance better.

Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Lehman’s laws of software evolution, and, in particular, continuing growth, captures the evolutionary pressure to add capabilities as systems are used and new demands or opportunities are perceived.

The basic thesis [ . . . . ] is that organizations which design systems [ . . . . ] are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. We have seen that this fact has important implications for the management of system design. Primarily, we have found a criterion for the structuring of design organizations: a design effort should be organized according to the need for communication.1

Formal structure (the org chart)—facilitates compliance Informal structure—the “realm of influence” between individuals Value creation structure—how work actually gets done based on inter-personal and inter-team reputation

A sort of “revival” of Conway’s law took place around 2015, when microservices architectures were on the rise. In particular, James Lewis, Technical Director at Thoughtworks, and others came up with the idea of applying an “inverse Conway maneuver” (or reverse Conway maneuver), whereby an organization focuses on organizing team structures to match the architecture they want the system to exhibit rather than expecting teams to follow a mandated architecture design.

Dan Pink’s three elements of intrinsic motivation: autonomy (quashed by constant juggling of requests and priorities from multiple teams), mastery (“jack of all trades, master of none”), and purpose (too many domains of responsibility).11

Team Members Need a Team-First Mindset The team should be the fundamental means of delivery rather than the individual. If we follow this team-first approach, we need to ensure that the people within our teams also have (or develop) a team-first mindset. This may be unfamiliar to some people, but with the right coaching and time to learn, many people adapt. For teams to work, team members should put the needs of the team above their own. They should: Arrive for stand-ups and meetings on time. Keep discussions and investigations on track. Encourage a focus on team goals. Help unblock other team members before starting on new work. Mentor new or less experienced team members. Avoid “winning” arguments and, instead, agree to explore options.

The Big Roads by Earl Swift

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Crossing a street could be an unsavory affair. In New York City, by one estimate, horses left behind 2.5 million pounds of manure and sixty thousand gallons of urine every day. That amounts to roughly four hundred thousand tons of manure a year—enough

The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Not long ago, America was more than the sum of its parts. Now, it is less. Around World War II, we were proud as a people but modest as individuals. Fewer than two people in ten said yes when asked, Are you a very important person? Today, more than six in ten say yes. Where we once thought ourselves collectively strong, we now regard ourselves as individually entitled.

Over the millennia, man has developed three ways of thinking about time: chaotic, cyclical, and linear. The first was the dominant view of primitive man, the second of ancient and traditional civilizations, and the third of the modern West, especially America.

Not surprisingly, America has come to embody the most extreme expression of progressive linearism.

Thus arose the dogma of American exceptionalism, the belief that this nation and its people had somehow broken loose from any risk of cyclical regress.

In America, as Mark Twain observed, nothing is older than our habit of calling everything new.

When we deem our social destiny entirely self-directed and our personal lives self-made, we lose any sense of participating in a collective myth larger than ourselves. We cannot ritually join with those who come before or after us.

“Trends, like horses, are easier to ride in the direction they are already going,” writes Megatrends’ John Naisbitt.

In public school textbooks, tidbits about past events are mixed together with lessons about geography, politics, and the arts into a sort of social studies stew.

Etymologically, the word time comes from tide—an ancient reference to the lunar cycle still retained in such expressions as “yuletide” and “good tidings.” Similarly, the word period originally meant “orbit,” as in “planetary period.” The word annual comes from annus, whose ancient root meant “circle.” The words year and hour come from the same root as the Greek hows, meaning “solar period.” The word month is a derivative of moon. Without cycles, time would literally defy any kind of description.

In childhood, the indulged Boomers were replaced by the neglected 13th Generation (born 1961-1981), who were left unprotected at a time of cultural convulsion and adult self-discovery. Known in pop culture as Generation X, its name here reflects the fact that it is literally the thirteenth generation to call itself American.

Finally, unlearn the linear view that positive change always comes willingly, incrementally, and by human design.

The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’m often asked what aspect of the job most keeps me up at night. The honest answer is that I don’t agonize over the work very much. I don’t know if it’s a quirk of brain chemistry, or a defense mechanism I developed in reaction to some family chaos in my youth, or the result of years of discipline—some combination of all of those things, I suppose—but I tend not to feel much anxiety when things go awry. And I tend to approach bad news as a problem that can be worked through and solved, something I have control over rather than something happening to me.

When the unexpected does happen, a kind of instinctive triage kicks in. You have to rely on your own internal “threat scale.” There are drop-everything events, and there are others when you say to yourself, This is serious, I need to be engaged right now, but I also need to extricate myself and focus on other things and return to this later. Sometimes, even though you’re “in charge,” you need to be aware that in the moment you might have nothing to add, and so you don’t wade in. You trust your people to do their jobs and focus your energies on some other pressing issue.

Optimism. One of the most important qualities of a good leader is optimism, a pragmatic enthusiasm for what can be achieved. Even in the face of difficult choices and less than ideal outcomes, an optimistic leader does not yield to pessimism. Simply put, people are not motivated or energized by pessimists.

Courage. The foundation of risk-taking is courage, and in ever-changing, disrupted businesses, risk-taking is essential, innovation is vital, and true innovation occurs only when people have courage. This is true of acquisitions, investments, and capital allocations, and it particularly applies to creative decisions. Fear of failure destroys creativity.

Focus. Allocating time, energy, and resources to the strategies, problems, and projects that are of highest importance and value is extremely important, and it’s imperative to communicate your priorities clearly and often.

Decisiveness. All decisions, no matter how difficult, can and should be made in a timely way. Leaders must encourage a diversity of opinion balanced with the need to make and implement decisions. Chronic indecision is not only inefficient and counterproductive, but it is deeply corrosive to morale.

Curiosity. A deep and abiding curiosity enables the discovery of new people, places, and ideas, as well as an awareness and an understanding of the marketplace and its changing dynamics. The path to innovation begins with curiosity.

Fairness. Strong leadership embodies the fair and decent treatment of people. Empathy is essential, as is accessibility. People committing honest mistakes deserve second chances, and judging people too harshly generates fear and anxiety, which discourage communication and innovation. Nothing is worse to an organization than a culture of fear.

Thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness is one of the most underrated elements of good leadership. It is the process of gaining knowledge, so an opinion rendered or decision made is more credible and more likely to be correct. It’s simply about taking the time to develop informed opinions.

Authenticity. Be genuine. Be honest. Don’t fake anything. Truth and authenticity breed respect and trust.

The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection. This doesn’t mean perfectionism at all costs, but it does mean a refusal to accept mediocrity or make excuses for something being “good enough.” If you believe that something can be made better, put in the effort to do it. If you’re in the business of making things, be in the business of making things great.

Integrity. Nothing is more important than the quality and integrity of an organization’s people and its product. A company’s success depends on setting high ethical standards for all things, big and small. Another way of saying this is: The way you do anything is the way you do everything.

It’s a delicate thing, finding the balance between demanding that your people perform and not instilling a fear of failure in them.

In your work, in your life, you’ll be more respected and trusted by the people around you if you honestly own up to your mistakes. It’s impossible not to make them; but it is possible to acknowledge them, learn from them, and set an example that it’s okay to get things wrong sometimes.

True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.

I never start out negatively, and unless we’re in the late stages of a production, I never start small. I’ve found that often people will focus on little details as a way of masking a lack of any clear, coherent, big thoughts. If you start petty, you seem petty.

I’ve generally tried over the years to keep my eye on the job I have and not the jobs I might someday have, but the thought that I might have a shot at running Disney one day was hard to ignore.

Dan handed me a note that read: “Avoid getting into the business of manufacturing trombone oil. You may become the greatest trombone-oil manufacturer in the world, but in the end, the world only consumes a few quarts of trombone oil a year!”

Managing your own time and respecting others’ time is one of the most vital things to do as a manager, and he was horrendous at it.

I’ve been asked a lot over the years about the best way to nurture ambition—both one’s own and that of the people you manage. As a leader, you should want those around you to be eager to rise up and take on more responsibility, as long as dreaming about the job they want doesn’t distract them from the job they have.

Conversely, if you’re a boss, these are the people to nurture—not the ones who are clamoring for promotions and complaining about not being utilized enough but the ones who are proving themselves to be indispensable day in and day out.

A company’s culture is shaped by a lot of things, but this is one of the most important—you have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly. In my experience, it’s what separates great managers from the rest. If leaders don’t articulate their priorities clearly, then the people around them don’t know what their own priorities should be. Time and energy and capital get wasted. People in your organization suffer unnecessary anxiety because they don’t know what they should be focused on. Inefficiency sets in, frustration builds up, morale sinks.

Don’t let your ego get in the way of making the best possible decision.

If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.

I don’t know if other CEOs agree with this, but I’ve noticed that you can accumulate so much power in a job that it becomes harder to keep a check on how you wield it. Little things can start to shift. Your confidence can easily tip over into overconfidence and become a liability. You can start to feel that you’ve heard every idea, and so you become impatient and dismissive of others’ opinions. It’s not intentional, it just comes with the territory. You have to make a conscious effort to listen, to pay attention to the multitude of opinions. I’ve raised the issue with the executives I work most closely with as a kind of safeguard. “If you notice me being too dismissive or impatient, you need to tell me.”

As a leader, if you don’t do the work, the people around you are going to know, and you’ll lose their respect fast. You have to be attentive. You often have to sit through meetings that, if given the choice, you might choose not to sit through. You have to listen to other people’s problems and help find solutions. It’s all part of the job.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A gentleman shouldn’t go on and on about what he does to stay fit. At least that’s how I see it.

Somerset Maugham once wrote that in each shave lies a philosophy. I couldn’t agree more. No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.

One runner told of a mantra his older brother, also a runner, had taught him which he’s pondered ever since he began running. Here it is: Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon running.

I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly.

Don’t misunderstand me—I’m not totally uncompetitive. It’s just that for some reason I never cared all that much whether I beat others or lost to them. This sentiment remained pretty much unchanged after I grew up. It doesn’t matter what field you’re talking about—beating somebody else just doesn’t do it for me. I’m much more interested in whether I reach the goals that I set for myself, so in this sense long-distance running is the perfect fit for a mindset like mine.

For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means. I’m at an ordinary—or perhaps more like mediocre—level. But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.

My only strength has always been the fact that I work hard and can take a lot physically. I’m more a workhorse than a racehorse.

But you can’t keep up that kind of life forever. Just as with school, you enter it, learn something, and then it’s time to leave.

The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.

Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.

They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?

People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they’ll go to any length to live longer. But I don’t think that’s the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life—and for me, for writing as well. I believe many runners would agree.

One generation takes over from the next. This is how things are handed over in this world, so I don’t feel so bad if they pass me. These girls have their own pace, their own sense of time. And I have my own pace, my own sense of time. The two are completely different, but that’s the way it should be.

To deal with something unhealthy, a person needs to be as healthy as possible. That’s my motto. In other words, an unhealthy soul requires a healthy body. This might sound paradoxical, but it’s something I’ve felt very keenly ever since I became a professional writer. The healthy and the unhealthy are not necessarily at opposite ends of the spectrum. They don’t stand in opposition to each other, but rather complement each other, and in some cases even band together. Sure, many people who are on a healthy track in life think only of good health, while those who are getting unhealthy think only of that. But if you follow this sort of one-sided view, your life won’t be fruitful.

I’m not a human. I’m a piece of machinery. I don’t need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead.

My time, the rank I attain, my outward appearance—all of these are secondary. For a runner like me, what’s really important is reaching the goal I set myself, under my own power. I give it everything I have, endure what needs enduring, and am able, in my own way, to be satisfied. From out of the failures and joys I always try to come away having grasped a concrete lesson. (It’s got to be concrete, no matter how small it is.) And I hope that, over time, as one race follows another, in the end I’ll reach a place I’m content with. Or maybe just catch a glimpse of it. (Yes, that’s a more appropriate way of putting it.)

‘No One Wanted to Read’ His Book on Pandemic Psychology – Then Covid Hit

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/19/book-psychology-pandemics-steven-taylor

A preferable term, Taylor writes, and one that has been used by psychologists for close to 60 years, is psychological reactance – a motivational response to “rules, regulation, or attempts at persuasion that are perceived as threatening to one’s autonomy and freedom of choice”.

“Psychological reactance has been an issue around any public health guidance, whether that’s increasing the intake of more fruit and vegetables, good dental hygiene or vaccinations and masks,” Taylor said. “The you’re-not-the-boss-of-me kind of response is seen particularly in people raised in cultures that take pride in freedom and individualism.”

Don’t Be Lonely: How to Make Friends if You’re Moving House

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/aug/17/dont-be-lonely-how-to-make-friends-if-youre-moving-house

Assume everyone likes youTrying to make new friends can make you feel like the unpopular kid at school again, but go in with a positive outlook. Franco reminds people of the “liking gap”. “Researchers found that people have a bias to underestimate how much other people like them. I like to tell people to assume other people like you. That also is supported by the ‘acceptance prophecy’ – when people are told to assume that others are going to accept them, they end up being more accepted, because it makes them more confident, outgoing, present.”

How the 10-Second Rule Can Dramatically Change Your Conversations and Make You a Better Leader

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/how-10-second-rule-can-dramatically-change-your-conversations-make-you-a-better-leader.html

It’s really quite simple: In any conversation during which the temperature has started to rise, wait 10 seconds before you respond. That’s it. Just stop. Don’t respond immediately. Instead, wait and give yourself a moment to be intentional in your response, instead of emotional. It isn’t magic, but you might be surprised at how well it works. Here’s what I mean.

20 Common Values [And Why People Can’t Agree on More]

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.nirandfar.com/common-values/

values are more forward-thinking than simply reactions to the immediate moment. They are attributes of the person you want to be.

6 Principles for Building a World Class TPM Team

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://doordash.engineering/2021/08/02/6-principles-for-building-a-world-class-tpm-team/

TPM should be a centralized function reporting to the head of engineering. Although TPMs represent a tiny fraction of the engineering team, they support the success of cross-functional engineering programs and deliver the most complex projects.

TPMs should constantly be automating and inventing, implementing light processes for the team, or teaching someone basic program management techniques–looking for how to make themselves unnecessary so they can work on solving the organization’s new challenges. I often tell people, tongue in cheek, that if we meet our goals we will work ourselves out of a job. Of course, in a company experiencing rapid growth, the business and scale issues mean there are always new problems to tackle. But solving problems systemically is a core tenet of high-performing TPM teams.

A Manager’s Guide to Holding Your Team Accountable

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://medium.dave-bailey.com/a-manager-guide-to-holding-your-team-accountable-a05aac67294c

For true accountability to take place, it helps to set up an ‘accountability loop’ with the following three questions:What will you do? (the commitment)When will you do it? (the timeframe)How will I know? (the reporting method)And there’s one question that gives you the answer to all three at once:What concrete action can you commit to completing before our next meeting?

Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.simplethread.com/agile-at-20-the-failed-rebellion/

Winning was easy, young man. Governing’s harder. Unfortunately, like many revolutions, the history of Agile didn’t unfold how the founders envisioned. It turns out that prioritizing individuals and interactions is a hard concept to sell. It’s much easier to sell processes and tools. It turns out that working software is harder to produce than unrealistic plans and reams of documentation. It turns out that collaborating with customers requires trust and vulnerability, not always present in a business setting. It turns out that responding to change often gets outweighed by executives wanting to feel in control and still legitimately needing to make long-term plans for their businesses.

Mind the Platform Execution Gap

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://martinfowler.com/articles/platform-prerequisites.html

A digital platform is a foundation of self-service APIs, tools, services, knowledge and support which are arranged as a compelling internal product. – Evan Bottcher

Why So Many Millennials Are Obsessed With Dogs

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/why-millennials-are-so-obsessed-with-dogs/619489/

But for the particular rung of the American socioeconomic ladder that has pursued dog ownership most fervently in recent years—young, urban professionals, especially white ones—dogs serve yet another purpose: They’re a class marker and a way of coping with deep status anxiety. Dogs broadcast stability—Midge is not nearly as expensive as a child or a single-family home, but she is an indicator that I have mastered enough elements of my own life to introduce some joyful chaos into it.

Exec Development Is a Different Game

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://commoncog.com/blog/exec-development-is-a-different-game/

“If you hire people at senior positions, you are a failure.” “I would say that my preferred method is not to ever hire outside your company for senior positions. It is at least 50% disappointing. I mean, because there is organ rejection. Every once in a while, for a certain position, you have to do it, but if you do it consistently, I think it’s the definition of a poorly managed company.”

The Measure of a Life Well Lived

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/06/26/henry-miller-on-turning-eighty/

I have very few friends or acquaintances my own age or near it. Though I am usually ill at ease in the company of elderly people I have the greatest respect and admiration for two very old men who seem to remain eternally young and creative. I mean [the Catalan cellist and conductor] Pablo Casals and Pablo Picasso, both over ninety now. Such youthful nonagenarians put the young to shame. Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses, so to speak, are the middle-aged, middleclass men and women who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will last forever or else are so frightened it won’t that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out.

One thing seems more and more evident to me now — people’s basic character does not change over the years… Far from improving them, success usually accentuates their faults or short-comings. The brilliant guys at school often turn out to be not so brilliant once they are out in the world. If you disliked or despised certain lads in your class you will dislike them even more when they become financiers, statesmen or five star generals. Life forces us to learn a few lessons, but not necessarily to grow.

I was cursed or blessed with a prolonged adolescence; I arrived at some seeming maturity when I was past thirty. It was only in my forties that I really began to feel young. By then I was ready for it. (Picasso once said: “One starts to get young at the age of sixty, and then it’s too late.”) By this time I had lost many illusions, but fortunately not my enthusiasm, nor the joy of living, nor my unquenchable curiosity.

One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.

The HashiCorp Journey: The Rise of a Cloud Powerhouse

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sat, 10 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.mayfield.com/the-hashicorp-journey-the-rise-of-a-cloud-powerhouse/

Professionalism is key – Many start-ups boast of their easy-going, perk-filled lifestyles, while internally, oversized egos lead to internal strife. The massive companies that run the world’s financial systems, energy grids, and other systems care for neither. They need vendors they can trust, who can deliver their software and services reliably, with no excuses. “At too many companies, half the job seems to be about getting internal factions aligned,” says Mitchell. “That’s just not the culture we wanted… We want an environment where people show up because they want to deliver the right technical solution.”

You Really Need to Quit Twitter

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sat, 10 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/twitter-addict-realizes-she-needs-rehab/619343/

I know I’m an addict because Twitter hacked itself so deep into my circuitry that it interrupted the very formation of my thoughts. Twenty years of journalism taught me to hit a word count almost without checking the numbers at the bottom of the screen. But now a corporation that operates against my best interests has me thinking in 280 characters. Every thought, every experience, seems to be reducible to this haiku, and my mind is instantly engaged by the challenge of concision. Once the line is formed, why not put it out there? Twitter is a red light, blinking, blinking, blinking, destroying my ability for private thought, sucking up all my talent and wit. Put it out there, post it, see how it does. What pours out is an ungodly sluice of high-minded opinions, sharp rebukes, jokes, transactional compliments, and mundane bulletins from my private life (to the extent that I have one anymore).

In Defense of Rugged Individualism and Self Improvement

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://thematthewkent.medium.com/in-defense-of-rugged-individualism-and-self-improvement-9b87bbea410

Only caring about yourself…That’s lazy.

How to Stop Living in ‘Infinite Browsing Mode’

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/06/pete-davis-dedicated-infinite-browsing/619039/

Dedicated emerged from a commencement speech Davis gave a few years ago, in which he articulated the perils of what he calls “infinite browsing mode,” the state of hopping from job to job or relationship to relationship in the same indecisive way that one peruses Netflix. This is not a bad problem to have—compared with a century ago, people today have far more agency over what they do, what they learn, where they live, and whom they marry—but when weighing all the options, holding out for some better imagined alternative can deny people the pleasures of long-term, committed immersion.

‘Luxury Beliefs’ Are the Latest Status Symbol for Rich Americans

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-status-symbol-for-rich-americans/

White privilege is the luxury belief that took me the longest to understand, because I grew up around poor whites. Often members of the upper-class claim that racial disparities stem from inherent advantages held by whites. Yet Asian Americans are more educated, have higher earnings and live longer than whites. Affluent whites are the most enthusiastic about the idea of white privilege, yet they are the least likely to incur any costs for promoting that belief. Rather, they raise their social standing by talking about their privilege.

How to Spot an Incompetent Leader

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sat, 29 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://hbr.org/2020/03/how-to-spot-an-incompetent-leader

If we want less incompetent men in leadership roles, those responsible for judging candidates need to improve their ability to distinguish between confidence and competence.

The Incredible Power of Friendship

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sat, 29 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://thegrowtheq.com/the-incredible-power-of-friendship/

Aristotle writes that there are three different kinds of friendship: 1) Friendships based on utility, in which one or both of the parties gain something as a result of the friendship (think: much of the modern “networking” enterprise, or becoming friends with someone because you think they can help you). 2) Friendships based on pleasure, or thosecentered around pleasant experiences (think: people with whom you can have a good, carefree time). 3) Friendships based on virtue, in which both individuals share the same values (think: people whom you admire and respect, and with whom you align on what you find most important in life).

What if Remote Work Didn’t Mean Working From Home?

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sat, 29 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/remote-work-not-from-home

The cognitive-science pioneer E. Colin Cherry famously dubbed this “the cocktail party problem”—in reference to the common experience of suddenly cueing your attention to the sound of your own name popping up in conversation across the room at a noisy party—and it helps explain why it’s possible to work productively for hours at a bustling coffee shop, only to have your attention hijacked when you hear a familiar topic arise in a neighboring conversation. Viewed through this perspective, your home, at times, can feel like a coffee shop in which all the patrons are talking about things that you care about.

Career Development: What It Really Means to Be a Manager, Director, or VP

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sat, 22 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://kellblog.com/2015/03/08/career-development-what-it-really-means-to-be-a-manager-director-or-vp/

I am talking about one of three levels at which people operate: manager, director, and vice president. Here are my definitions: Managers are paid to drive results with some support. They have experience in the function, can take responsibility, but are still learning the job and will have questions and need support. They can execute the tactical plan for a project but typically can’t make it. Directors are paid to drive results with little or no supervision (“set and forget”). Directors know how to do the job. They can make a project’s tactical plan in their sleep. They can work across the organization to get it done. I love strong directors. They get shit done. VPs are paid to make the plan. Say you run marketing. Your job is to understand the company’s business situation, make a plan to address it, build consensus to get approval of that plan, and then go execute it.

Your Relationship Will Improve if You Stop Texting to Communicate

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sun, 16 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://medium.com/p/878ffc68d52a

“When you text, use it for information, NOT communication.”

A Sunday Evening Ritual That Makes Monday Less Awful

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Sat, 15 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://medium.com/p/c0353c50883c

Make plans around my “core desired feelings.” I’ve written before about the creative brilliance of Danielle LaPorte and her concept of “core desired feelings.” LaPorte says when we make goals and plans, we should consider how we want to feel every day. She guides her readers through a series of exercises to find their “core desired feelings.” One of mine is awe. I’ve made a big list of activities that conjure that feeling: observe the moon through my telescope, go on a hike, take a road trip to the sequoias. Each week, I go through my list of activities related to each of my core desired feelings and schedule a few of those activities throughout the week.

Should Young Americans Be Required to Give a Year of Service?

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 12 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/01/opinion/us-national-service-draft.html

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a former commander of international forces in Afghanistan and head of the “Serve America. Together” campaign, recently called on the president to invest in universal national service for one million young Americans annually as “the most important strategy we can implement to ensure the strength and security of our nation.”

Daily Rituals by Mason Currey

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Mon, 10 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

(“I don’t approve of people who watch television,” he said, “but I am one of them.”)

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Christensen, Allworth, Dillon

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Mon, 10 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

People often think that the best way to predict the future is by collecting as much data as possible before making a decision. But this is like driving a car looking only at the rearview mirror—because data is only available about the past.

On one side of the equation, there are the elements of work that, if not done right, will cause us to be dissatisfied. These are called hygiene factors. Hygiene factors are things like status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, and supervisory practices. It matters, for example, that you don’t have a manager who manipulates you for his own purposes—or who doesn’t hold you accountable for things over which you don’t have responsibility. Bad hygiene causes dissatisfaction. You have to address and fix bad hygiene to ensure that you are not dissatisfied in your work.

This is an important insight from Herzberg’s research: if you instantly improve the hygiene factors of your job, you’re not going to suddenly love it. At best, you just won’t hate it anymore. The opposite of job dissatisfaction isn’t job satisfaction, but rather an absence of job dissatisfaction.

Managing it is very hard—the deliberate strategy and the new emerging opportunities fight for resources. On the one hand, if you have a strategy that really is working, you need to deliberately focus to keep everyone working together in the right direction. At the same time, however, that focus can easily cause you to dismiss as a distraction what could actually turn out to be the next big thing.

There’s a tool that can help you test whether your deliberate strategy or a new emergent one will be a fruitful approach. It forces you to articulate what assumptions need to be proved true in order for the strategy to succeed. The academics who created this process, Ian MacMillan and Rita McGrath, called it “discovery-driven planning,” but it might be easier to think about it as “What has to prove true for this to work?”

you and your wife can’t always articulate what the fundamental jobs are that you each are personally trying to do, let alone articulate the fundamental jobs that your wife has, for which she might hire a husband to get done. Understanding the job requires the critical ingredients of intuition and empathy.

The culture we picked is the right culture for our family, but every family should choose a culture that’s right for them. What is important is to actively choose what matters to you, and then engineer the culture to reinforce those elements, as Schein’s theory shows. It entails choosing what activities we pursue, and what outcomes we need to achieve, so that as a family, when we have to perform those activities again, we all think: “This is how we do it.”

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Mon, 10 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It is character that communicates most eloquently. As Emerson once put it, “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”

Tribe by Sebastian Junger

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Mon, 10 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A person living in a modern city or a suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day—or an entire life—mostly encountering complete strangers. They can be surrounded by others and yet feel deeply, dangerously alone.

Children are helped regardless of gender, as are the elderly, but women of reproductive age are twice as likely to be helped by a stranger than men are. Men have to wait, on average, until age seventy-five before they can expect the same kind of assistance in a life-threatening situation that women get their whole lives.

Because modern society has almost completely eliminated trauma and violence from everyday life, anyone who does suffer those things is deemed to be extraordinarily unfortunate. This gives people access to sympathy and resources but also creates an identity of victimhood that can delay recovery.

America’s great wealth, although a blessing in many ways, has allowed for the growth of an individualistic society that suffers high rates of depression and anxiety.

When you throw trash on the ground, you apparently don’t see yourself as truly belonging to the world that you’re walking around in.

To make matters worse, politicians occasionally accuse rivals of deliberately trying to harm their own country—a charge so destructive to group unity that most past societies would probably have just punished it as a form of treason.

The United States is so powerful that the only country capable of destroying her might be the United States herself,

Finding Ultra by Rich Roll

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

But of course no matter where I went, I always brought myself with me, so it wasn’t long before I resumed my old ways.

“But if all I do is go slow, how will I ever get fast?” I asked Chris. “The prize never goes to the fastest guy,” Chris replied. “It goes to the guy who slows down the least.” True in endurance sports. And possibly even truer in life.

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The point of doing nothing, as I define it, isn’t to return to work refreshed and ready to be more productive, but rather to question what we currently perceive as productive. My argument is obviously anticapitalist, especially concerning technologies that encourage a capitalist perception of time, place, self, and community.

But the villain here is not necessarily the Internet, or even the idea of social media; it is the invasive logic of commercial social media and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction.

like the technology writer Jaron Lanier, I sought to “double down on being human.”

In a public space, ideally, you are a citizen with agency; in a faux public space, you are either a consumer or a threat to the design of the place.

It turns out that groundedness requires actual ground.

As Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist who records natural soundscapes, put it: “Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.”

Yet we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative. Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way.

Arise in Disaster, in which Rebecca Solnit dispenses with the myth that people become desperate and selfish after disasters. From the 1906 San Franscisco earthquake to Hurricane Katrina, she gives detailed accounts of the surprising resourcefulness, empathy, and sometimes even humor that arise in dark circumstances. Several of her interviewees report feeling a strange nostalgia for the purposefulness and the connection they felt with their neighbors immediately following a disaster. Solnit suggests that the real disaster is everyday life, which alienates us from each other and from the protective impulse that we harbor.

I was surprised to find how quickly I stopped caring. Not only that, I was fascinated with how inert my phone appeared as an object; it was no longer a portal to a thousand other places, a machine charged with dread and potentiality, or even a communication device. It was just a black metal rectangle, lying there as silently and matter-of-factly as a sweater or a book. Its only use was as a flashlight and a timer.

DREAM OF a permanent retreat registers a familiar and age-old reaction to an untenable situation: leave and find a place to start over.

Preemptively calling it a “peaceful project” avoids the fact that regardless of how high-tech your society might be, “peace” is an endless negotiation among free-acting agents whose wills cannot be engineered. Politics necessarily exist between even two individuals with free will; any attempt to reduce politics to design (Thiel’s “machinery of freedom”) is also an attempt to reduce people to machines or mechanical beings.

Whipped into a permanent state of frenzy, people create and subject themselves to news cycles, complaining of anxiety at the same time that they check back ever more diligently.

Just considering the possibility makes room for the lived realities of other people, whose depths are the same as your own. This is a marked departure from the self-centered “default setting,” whose only option is to see people as inert beings who are in the way:

THE MOST OBVIOUS answer is that we should care about those around us because we are beholden to each other in a practical sense. This is where I would place my encounter with the woman having a seizure: I was helpful because I was nearby. Neighborhoods can be networks of support in situations both banal and extreme. Let’s not forget that, in a time of increasing climate-related events, those who help you will likely not be your Twitter followers; they will be your neighbors.

Alan Watts once called the sensation of an ego a hallucination, “a completely false conception of ourselves as an ego inside a bag of skin.”

After all, it is public opinion that social media exploits, and public opinion that has no patience for ambiguity, context, or breaks with tradition. Public opinion is not looking to change or to be challenged; it is what wants a band to keep making songs exactly like the hit they once had. Conversations, whether with oneself or with others, are different.

The fact that commenting on the weather is a cliché of small talk is actually a profound reminder of this, since the weather is one of the only things we each know any other person must pay attention to.

When we take an instrumental or even algorithmic view of friendship and recognition, or fortify the imagined bastion of the self against change, or even just fail to see that we affect and are affected by others (even and especially those we do not see)—then we unnaturally corral our attention to others and to the places we inhabit together. It is with acts of attention that we decide who to hear, who to see, and who in our world has agency. In this way, attention forms the ground not just for love, but for ethics.

It also requires humility and openness, because to seek context is already to acknowledge that you don’t have the whole story.

describe how context collapse creates a “lowest-common-denominator philosophy of sharing [that] limits users to topics that are safe for all possible readers.”

Seen from the point of view of forward-pressing, productive time, this behavior would appear delinquent. I’d look like a dropout. But from the point of view of the place, I’d look like someone who was finally paying it attention. And from the point of view of myself, the person actually experiencing my life, and to whom I will ultimately answer when I die—I would know that I spent that day on Earth. In moments like this, even the question itself of the attention economy fades away. If you asked me to answer it, I might say—without lifting my eyes from the things growing and creeping along the ground—“I would prefer not to.”

Slack by Tom DeMarco

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Energy is evident in the workplace, but it’s not the energy tinged with fear that comes from being slightly behind on everything.

There has to be an element of present truth to the assertion. The challenge “Run a four-minute mile because that’s what we are all about ” would not inspire most of us because we wouldn’t see the present truth of the “what we’re all about” part. 2. There is always an element of proposed future truth in the statement. Though it masquerades as “what we are all about, ” it is at least partly urging us toward “what we could be all about.” 3. When the statement walks perfectly between what is and what could be, and the could-be part is wonderful but not impossible, acceptance by those listening is almost assured.

168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

At the beginning of the meeting, the meeting leader spells out the goals.

The blogosphere boils like a tent revival with writers evangelizing about their “lifehacks,” their reliance on forty-three folders, and their tech systems for pursuing that ideal of In-box Zero.

Any “work” that is not advancing you toward the professional life you want should not count as work. It is wasted time.

You weren’t invited to the meeting because you’re important—you were invited because people don’t think you have anything better to do!

The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything. There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.

The simple existence of an alternate, plausible scenario is often all that’s needed to keep hope alive among a worried workforce.

They scheduled an appointment and presented me with a slide deck detailing why my decision to start Oxide was quixotic, misguided, and downright stupid. They argued that it would steal precious resources from our core business while pursuing a product that would surely fail. I let them present all forty-five slides without my asking them a single question. When they finished I said, “Did I ask for this presentation?” Those were the first words I spoke as I made the transition from a peacetime CEO to a wartime CEO.

He said, “You need to stay home and make sure everybody knows where they stand. You can’t wait a day. In fact, you can’t wait a minute. They need to know whether they are working for you, EDS, or looking for a fucking job.” Damn. He was right. I sent Marc to New York and prepared to let people know where they stood. That small piece of advice from Bill proved to be the foundation we needed to rebuild the company. If we hadn’t treated the people who were leaving fairly, the people who stayed would never have trusted me again. Only a CEO who had been through some awful, horrible, devastating circumstances would know to give that advice at that time.

Early in my career as an engineer, I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.

Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.

Parcells: “Al, I am just not sure how we can win without so many of our best players. What should I do?” Davis: “Bill, nobody cares, just coach your team.” That might be the best CEO advice ever. Because, you see, nobody cares. When things go wrong in your company, nobody cares. The media don’t care, your investors don’t care, your board doesn’t care, your employees don’t care, and even your mama doesn’t care. Nobody cares.

My old boss Jim Barksdale was fond of saying, “We take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order.”

GOOD PRODUCT MANAGER/BAD PRODUCT MANAGER Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line, and the competition extremely well and operate from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence. A good product manager is the CEO of the product. Good product managers take full responsibility and measure themselves in terms of the success of the product. They are responsible for right product/right time and all that entails. A good product manager knows the context going in (the company, our revenue funding, competition, etc.), and they take responsibility for devising and executing a winning plan (no excuses). Bad product managers have lots of excuses. Not enough funding, the engineering manager is an idiot, Microsoft has ten times as many engineers working on it, I’m overworked, I don’t get enough direction. Our CEO doesn’t make these kinds of excuses and neither should the CEO of a product. Good product managers don’t get all of their time sucked up by the various organizations that must work together to deliver the right product at the right time. They don’t take all the product team minutes; they don’t project manage the various functions; they are not gofers for engineering.

They are not part of the product team; they manage the product team. Engineering teams don’t consider good product managers a “marketing resource.” Good product managers are the marketing counterparts to the engineering manager. Good product managers crisply define the target, the “what” (as opposed to the “how”), and manage the delivery of the “what.” Bad product managers feel best about themselves when they figure out “how.” Good product managers communicate crisply to engineering in writing as well as verbally. Good product managers don’t give direction informally. Good product managers gather information informally.

Good product managers create collateral, FAQs, presentations, and white papers that can be leveraged by salespeople, marketing people, and executives. Bad product managers complain that they spend all day answering questions for the sales force and are swamped. Good product managers anticipate the serious product flaws and build real solutions. Bad product managers put out fires all day. Good product managers take written positions on important issues (competitive silver bullets, tough architectural choices, tough product decisions, and markets to attack or yield). Bad product managers voice their opinions verbally and lament that the “powers that be” won’t let it happen. Once bad product managers fail, they point out that they predicted they would fail. Good product managers focus the team on revenue and customers. Bad product managers focus the team on how many features competitors are building.…

Good product managers think in terms of delivering superior value to the marketplace during product planning and achieving market share and revenue goals during the go-to-market phase. Bad product managers get very confused about the differences among delivering value, matching competitive features, pricing, and ubiquity. Good product managers decompose problems. Bad product managers combine all problems into one. Good product managers think about the story they want written by the press. Bad product managers think about covering every feature and being absolutely technically accurate with the press. Good product managers ask the press questions. Bad product managers answer any press question. Good product managers assume members of the press…

Good product managers err on the side of clarity. Bad product managers never even explain the obvious. Good product managers define their job and their success. Bad product managers constantly want to be told what to do. Good product managers send their status reports in on time every week, because they are disciplined. Bad product…

Valuing lack of weakness rather than strength The more experience you have, the more you realize that there is something seriously wrong with every employee in your company (including you). Nobody is perfect.

People rarely improve weakness they are unaware of.

Build strict processes for potentially political issues and do not deviate. Certain activities attract political behavior. These activities include: Performance evaluation and compensation Organizational design and territory Promotions

When someone raises an issue like this with you, you must be very careful about what you say, because everything that you say can be turned into political cannon fodder. Generally, it’s best to say nothing at all. At most, you might ask “why?” but if you do so be sure not to react to the reasons. If you indicate what you are thinking, that information will leak, rumors will spread, and you plant the seeds for all kinds of unproductive discussions.

Do not attempt to address behavioral issues without both executives in the room. Doing so will invite manipulation and politics.

Some questions that I’ve found to be very effective in one-on-ones: If we could improve in any way, how would we do it? What’s the number-one problem with our organization? Why? What’s not fun about working here? Who is really kicking ass in the company? Whom do you admire? If you were me, what changes would you make? What don’t you like about the product? What’s the biggest opportunity that we’re missing out on? What are we not doing that we should be doing? Are you happy working here?

The world is full of bankrupt companies with world-class cultures. Culture does not make a company.

Focus on the road, not the wall. When someone learns to drive a race car, one of the first lessons taught is that when you are going around a curve at 200 mph, do not focus on the wall; focus on the road. If you focus on the wall, you will drive right into it. If you focus on the road, you will follow the road. Running a company is like that. There are always a thousand things that can go wrong and sink the ship. If you focus too much on them, you will drive yourself nuts and likely crash your company. Focus on where you are going rather than on what you hope to avoid.

Range by David Epstein

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Overspecialization can lead to collective tragedy even when every individual separately takes the most reasonable course of action.

Whether or not experience inevitably led to expertise, they agreed, depended entirely on the domain in question. Narrow experience made for better chess and poker players and firefighters, but not for better predictors of financial or political trends, or of how employees or patients would perform.

In wicked domains, the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both.

Our greatest strength is the exact opposite of narrow specialization. It is the ability to integrate broadly.

AI has made tremendous progress, but challenges remain. In a truly open-world problem devoid of rigid rules and reams of perfect historical data, AI has been disastrous. IBM’s Watson destroyed at Jeopardy! and was subsequently pitched as a revolution in cancer care, where it flopped so spectacularly that several AI experts told me they worried its reputation would taint AI research in health-related fields. As one oncologist put it, “The difference between winning at Jeopardy! and curing all cancer is that we know the answer to Jeopardy! questions.” With cancer, we’re still working on posing the right questions in the first place.

Tellingly, Marcus gave me this analogy for the current limits of expert machines: “AI systems are like savants.” They need stable structures and narrow worlds.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz demonstrated a similar, learned inflexibility among experienced practitioners when he gave college students a logic puzzle that involved hitting switches to turn light bulbs on and off in sequence, and that they could play over and over. It could be solved in seventy different ways, with a tiny money reward for each success. The students were not given any rules, and so had to proceed by trial and error.* If a student found a solution, they repeated it over and over to get more money, even if they had no idea why it worked. Later on, new students were added, and all were now asked to discover the general rule of all solutions. Incredibly, every student who was brand-new to the puzzle discovered the rule for all seventy solutions, while only one of the students who had been getting rewarded for a single solution did. The subtitle of Schwartz’s paper: “How Not to Teach People to Discover Rules”—that is, by providing rewards for repetitive short-term success with a narrow range of solutions.

In totality, the picture is in line with a classic research finding that is not specific to music: breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. That is, the more contexts in which something is learned, the more the learner creates abstract models, and the less they rely on any particular example. Learners become better at applying their knowledge to a situation they’ve never seen before, which is the essence of creativity.

Repetition, it turned out, was less important than struggle.

Here is the bright side: over the past forty years, Americans have increasingly said in national surveys that current students are getting a worse education than they themselves did, and they have been wrong. Scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, “the nation’s report card,” have risen steadily since the 1970s. Unquestionably, students today have mastery of basic skills that is superior to students of the past. School has not gotten worse. The goals of education have just become loftier.

Exploration is not just a whimsical luxury of education; it is a central benefit.

Winston Churchill’s “never give in, never, never, never, never” is an oft-quoted trope. The end of the sentence is always left out: “except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

Do not be an engineer, he said, be a producer. “The producer knows that there’s such a thing as a semiconductor, but doesn’t need to know its inner workings. . . . That can be left to the experts.” He argued, “Everyone takes the approach of learning detailed, complex skills. If no one did this then there wouldn’t be people who shine as engineers. . . . Looking at me, from the engineer’s perspective, it’s like, ‘Look at this idiot,’ but once you’ve got a couple hit products under your belt, this word ‘idiot’ seems to slip away somewhere.”

Fortunately, it is possible, even today, even at the cutting edge, even in the most hyperspecialized specialties, to cultivate land where both birds and frogs can thrive.

Facing uncertain environments and wicked problems, breadth of experience is invaluable. Facing kind problems, narrow specialization can be remarkably efficient. The problem is that we often expect the hyperspecialist, because of their expertise in a narrow area, to magically be able to extend their skill to wicked problems. The results can be disastrous.

The Danish proverb that warns “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future,” was right.

God does not play dice with the universe, Einstein asserted, figuratively. Niels Bohr, his contemporary who illuminated the structure of atoms (using analogies to Saturn’s rings and the solar system), replied that Einstein should keep an open mind and not tell God how to run the universe.

He emphasized that there is a difference between the chain of command and the chain of communication, and that the difference represents a healthy cross-pressure.

Compare yourself to yourself yesterday, not to younger people who aren’t you. Everyone progresses at a different rate, so don’t let anyone else make you feel behind. You probably don’t even know where exactly you’re going, so feeling behind doesn’t help. Instead, as Herminia Ibarra suggested for the proactive pursuit of match quality, start planning experiments.

As Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a century ago, of the free exchange of ideas, “It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.”

18 Minutes by Peter Bregman

me@mattmcq.me (Matt McQ) — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

How did the day go? What success did I experience? What challenges did I endure? 2. What did I learn today? About myself? About others? What do I plan to do—differently or the same—tomorrow? 3. Whom did I interact with? Anyone I need to update? Thank? Ask a question of? Share feedback with?

So the first time someone does something that makes me feel uncomfortable, I simply notice it. The second time, I acknowledge that the first time was not an isolated event or an accident but a potential pattern, and I begin to observe more closely and plan my response. The third time? The third time I always speak to the person about it. It’s my rule of three.

Whatever your issue, when the beep sounds, take a breath and use that one-minute pause to ask yourself whether you’re being the person you want to be. Ask yourself if you’re trying to accomplish too much. Or if you’re focusing on the wrong things. In other words, disrupt the source that destabilizes you. Reduce the overwhelm. Reconnect with the outcome you’re trying to achieve, not just the things you’re doing. Then you’ll react less and achieve more.