James Hetfield said that when he found Lars, he had finally found the other person who was just as committed as he was to making it work. Everybody else was just f’n around.

That’s who he was looking for. Someone else who was committed. He knew this was who he was going to hitch his wagon to, regardless of their differences.

You know the difference. You see it in others. If you’re honest with yourself, you see it in you. You know when you’re committed or just f’n around.

Commitment overrides differences. It engages complementary skill sets. It makes 1 + 1 > 2. It breeds trust. It pulls through.

Just f’n around is fine. We can’t be committed to everything in our lives all the time. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t kid yourself.

Success, whatever that looks like, requires committment — marriage, startups, bands, hockey teams, congregations, communities.

Are you committed or just f’n around?

More. Better. Faster. Cheaper.

1. Every software engineer will have an army of coding interns who rarely get it wrong. 
2. Therefore, every software engineer will be an architect, chief engineer, and engineering manager. 
3. You may think this means less software engineers, but it will be the opposite. Today, software is expensive and slow to create. Unshackling army size and cost will lead to an exponential increase in software applications. More software engineers will be required.
4. Given the changing software engineer’s role, so will his/her language (more natural language, less syntax) and skillset (vision, requirements, higher level problem thought, etc).
5. The coding interns (ie, the AI generative coding models) have a great advantage over other generative AI use cases — namely, they live in a closed system with specific purpose and requirements. Given an endpoint and purpose, AI can easily write code, generate tests according to the purpose and implementation, execute tests, and then adjust the code until the requirements are met. 
6. Product quality will increase, but probably after some famous and widely reported bumps in the road. 
7. The coding interns bring another advantage — they can quickly try adjacent use cases and what-ifs, which helps the software engineer rethink purpose and outcomes. 
8. The coding interns will get good at making decisions about applications and services to use to solve problems. Will we start marketing to AI? I think so.
9. Similar with UI. AI uses the CLI (just like me) and API. These will become even more important than today. 
10. Startups, especially solopreneur startups, will increase. New ideas, applications, and creative endeavors will become more accessible to more people through software abundance. Business will follow. This might be, at the end of the day, the most important and largest effect.

Anybody who can read a map can lead when you’re on the perfectly mapped grid of the city streets. “We want to go over there. To get there, we walk two blocks north and then 5 blocks east.”

But what about when you’re off the grid?

If your spacecraft is in peril, you’ll want a leader who can assess quickly, keep the team focused and prioritized, and command clearly.

If your Church community is faltering, you’ll want a leader who cares about and cares for the people.

If your startup just launched, you’ll want a leader who has a vision, creates a followership, and remains open to possibility and opportunity.

Not all leaders are equipped to handle the wilderness. To navigate off the grid, you’ll need one who assesses the terrain, gives a shit, digs in, anticipates, adapts, and rallies others around a common goal.

If you’re stuck off the grid, you can look for that kind of leader.

Or you become one.

I had a special moment this last weekend.

Shared it with my youngest son, which both made it more special and has me reflecting on it. 

Daily life is a procedure. Wake up, do these things, go to bed, do it again tomorrow. A pattern. The grind. A script we follow without much thinking.

The magic, of course, is in the “do these things.” If you’re aware, you can be present. If you can be present, you can appreciate. But yeah, it’s hard. Hard to appreciate when you’re neck-deep in it. Plus, I’m a destination guy, and I’ve got a destination on my radar right now. As I’ve aged, I’ve gotten much better at awareness and presence, but old dog and new tricks, ya know. 

But this weekend broke the script in the best way possible.

Thank you, Luke, for not only forcing me out of the grind but sharing it with me. I’m still processing how special it was. May never fully process it.

For sure, I won’t ever take it for granted. 

(P.S. We went here. I’ve seen them 5 times now — 1986, 1988, 1989, 1992, and now again in 2024. That’s 32 years between shows 4 and 5. 32 years of build-up discharged in one 36 hour period.)

Knowledge is facts, figures, and theories. You’ll find the path to knowledge in books, museums, and YouTube.

But knowledge doesn’t get you anywhere until you turn that knowledge into learning.

Learning happens when you take that knowledge and act on it. You try stuff. You build skills. You turn book smarts into street smarts. What to do into how to do it.

It’s the practice — the behavior — that matters.

Knowledge is useful at a dinner party, but learning is how you change your life.

Your skins cells are replaced every 2-3 weeks. Your red blood cells get replaced every 4 months. Fat cells every 8 years. Skeletal muscle cells may take 10 years.

The whole process adds up to a full replacement of your cells approximately every 7-10 years. You’re an entirely new you every 7-10 years. But are you?

Stand next to a stream and watch the water flow. The stream exists in perpetuity, but the individual water molecules flowing through are replaced every few seconds. The contents of the stream is entirely new as each second passes. Is the stream the same?

You are not a static being but a dynamic process, continuously evolving, never truly the same. If you don’t like who you are right now, just wait a bit.

Your opportunity to replace your current self is just around the corner.

Many people just want to be told what to do. That’s not a judgment or a bad thing. It’s just a fact.

If you’re a listener, be careful who you’re listening to. A hack that faux-leaders have used since the dawn of time is to be the one who talks the loudest. Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler gained power partly because they were the loudest talkers.

On the flip side, you can stand out by being the one who does the telling.

Use that power wisely.

The speed of sound. The four-minute mile. The top of Mount Everest. The 2-hour marathon. Human flight. Splitting the atom. Cloning a mammal.

All invisible barriers that were once thought impossible to cross. It makes sense, though, because we like barriers. Especially invisible ones. Barriers make our lives more understandable, deterministic, and easier. We like to live inside the box.

But we crossed these barriers. How?

By being open and willing.

Open to new beliefs. Willing to challenge. Open to possibilities. Willing to try new paths. Open to other ideas. Willing to put in the work. Open to (apparent) magic. Willing to believe.

This works for you personally as well.

What are the invisible barriers that exist in your life? Are you open and willing to overcome them?

It won’t be comfortable, but it will be worth it.

ChatGPT hallucinates. So do we humans.

“AI hallucination is a phenomenon wherein a large language model (LLM) perceives patterns or objects that are nonexistent or imperceptible to human observers, creating outputs that are nonsensical or altogether inaccurate.”

— IBM

And just like with other humans, we humans must figure out if we trust the output we’re getting.

How do we do that with other humans?

We apply our own trust calibration factor. We ask ourselves questions like:

“Do I trust this person?”
“How much do I trust this person?”
“Do I trust this person’s character/integrity/expertise/credentials?”
“Why should I trust this person?”

But it’s rarely a toggle switch of either “trust” or “do not trust.” It’s usually more of a spectrum. Unfortunately, we sometimes have to take action as if it’s a toggle switch, but we likely don’t feel that way. 

“I will (not) get the vaccine.”
“I will (not) have an abortion.”

When it comes to AI, we need to do the same thing. We need to apply some trust calibration factor. The good news is that some people are starting to apply some very smart logic to this problem.

It’s called “Thermometer,” and it helps AI avoid being overconfident about its own answers, which in turn helps us avoid being overconfident about its answers.

The fundamental problem, though, is the same as we humans have — do we trust ourselves to properly calibrate our trust factors?

Ever have a moment where someone recounts something you did, assumes you would do something, or replays a dream in which you played a part?

Yes, of course, you have.

When you hear it, did you ever think or say, “Yup, that sounds like me.”

How did that make you feel? Happy? Embarrassed? Cringey? Empowered? Meh?

This tells you something about yourself and how you show up in the world. Do you like how you show up in the world?

As a leader, you can apply the same principle to your team, organization, or community. Observe how others describe what you did, or what they assume you’ll do, and how they perceived it. Listen, seek feedback, and ask yourself, “Does that sound like us?”

Whether you like or don’t like the answer, now you have an opportunity.

Don’t waste opportunities.

I

I looked over something I had written years ago, and I was appalled.

The writing itself, of course (oh dear), but I give myself grace on that because that’s just experience. But the content, oh my. I just don’t believe it anymore. What was I thinking?

And then it hit me.

I was a different person at that time. Since then, I’ve seen different things, had different experiences, and lived more life. Of course, I don’t believe it anymore. Why would I?

That’s ok. In fact, it’s better than ok. Rethinking, refreshing, and revising one’s beliefs is not only natural, it’s growth.

Give yourself grace when you change your mind. And maybe, more importantly, give others grace when they change theirs. Both science and humanity require it.

The Chicago White Sox did it first in 1960.

They were the first to add the player’s names to the back of the jerseys on their road uniforms. It was marketing aimed at enhancing player identification.

It worked, and it spread.

Today, only three pro teams do not display the player names — Yankees, Red Sox, and Giants. Somewhat ironically, they’re all baseball teams.

“We play for the logo on the front, not the name on the back.”

Who do you root for? Do you follow your favorite player from team to team, or are they dead to you once they don the enemy colors?

The magic happens when you don’t have to choose. “My favorite player plays for my favorite team.”

The same is true for brands, political parties, institutions, and systems.

Who do you root for, the player or the team?

Nobody talks about the gantry when they reminisce about the Saturn V and Apollo.

Except everyone who worked on the program.

The gantry — the red steel skeleton that stood watch next to the giant launch vehicle — was a critical piece of the mobile launch platform (MLP). The MLP allowed the rocket to be assembled vertically in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and then transported to the launch pad while maintaining its vertical orientation.

The seemingly innocuous curiosity of moving a 363′ rocket from assembly building to launch pad was one of the first program-level design decisions to be made because everything depended upon it.

It enabled the verticle assembly and transportation of the rocket, pre-launch activities and preparation, stability during pre-launch and launch, fueling and provided power. The disconnection of the gantry from the rocket happened at the very last millisecond it lifted off the ground. It was only at this moment that Saturn V became a fully autonomous system.

It wasn’t just a support structure; it was the backbone of the entire operation.

Don’t forget about the gantry. Who and what helped you? Who and what made it possible for you to become who you are? Who and what supported you until that very moment you launched?

Also, you can be or you can make the gantry for someone else. You can be an idea gantry. You can be an emotional gantry. You can make the system that enables the system.

You’ll probably fail.
You’ll probably make a fool of yourself.
You’ll probably end up back where you started.

But…

You’ll probably learn something.
You’ll probably gain confidence.
You’ll probably never regret it.

Do you know the Pixar movie “A Bug’s Life?”

Possibly not, because it didn’t have nearly the success that its predecessor, “Toy Story” did. It’s been labeled less polished, less relatable, and just not as good.

I disagree, however. I’ve always liked the movie better than “Toy Story.”

Because I think about leadership, individuals, and systems all the time. And this movie is 100% about leadership, individuals, and systems. 

• Flik, the leader: Innovation, courage, a willingness to be wrong, and an ability to create a followership.
• The Circus Bugs: Each individual with their unique strengths adds up to a greater whole. 1 + 1 > 2
• The Colony: You want real, lasting change? Change the system.

Whether you stand at the front or sit in the back row, maybe give A Bug’s Life a whirl.

You think you have a good idea?

Prove it. Go find some (3? 10? 100?) others who agree. If they exist, then you might have a good idea.

What if you can’t find them? 

1. Maybe you’re not looking in the right place.
2. Maybe you’re not looking for the right people.
3. Maybe you don’t recognize them. 
4. Maybe they don’t recognize you.
5. Maybe their clock and your clock aren’t synced 
6. Maybe you don’t have a good idea

If you think you have a good idea, you should definitely work through 1 – 5. These are skills you can develop through action and thoughtfulness. It might take longer than you want or expect, but you can do it. 

The trouble with looking for proof is that you might just find it.

Cows run away from the storm. Buffalos run toward it.

Or at least that’s how the myth goes and how the motivational speakers frame it. I’ve never tested it myself. I just don’t have any Buffalos. I do, however, watch the cows across the field, and they seem to generally follow this trend.

OK, so let’s just go with it, at least in spirit.

Today is a big day. You’re a bundle of nerves. How will it turn out?

One way to manage it is to try to forget about it. Distract yourself. Tell yourself it doesn’t matter. Run away. Another is to lean into it. Overprepare. Tell yourself it means everything. Run towards it.

Maybe there’s a third way. Maybe you shouldn’t run at all. Maybe you should sit and be present. Be prepared, but not with a script. Let the situation unfold. Be open. You might end up sopping wet. But you might end up cleansed and refreshed.

Maybe don’t be a buffalo or a cow. Maybe be a human.

Arcadia Publishing created a series of books titled Images of America. You’ve probably seen them in gift shops or local bookstores, and if you’re a history buff (like me), you’ve probably looked through a few of them. Sepia-toned photos of people, places, and things. 

The stated purpose of this series is to document local history, educate, and foster community pride. Photographichistorical storytelling. 

When I pick one up and browse through it, I like to find and compare the images with today. Sometimes, the location they show looks remarkably similar; sometimes, you can make out a few buildings that are the same, and sometimes, they’re unrecognizable. In any case, I always find myself thinking, “Isn’t that interesting.”

Each photograph captures a moment, a story, from the area’s past. By comparing them to the current surroundings, we can see the threads that connect the location to it’s history. That connection is unbreakable and critical.

Just like us. Your personal history leaves an indelible impression on how you view the world. As it does with your neighbor.

“Isn’t that interesting.”

The more we can engage with that in mind, the more we can love, respect, and understand each other. 

In today’s Western life, you don’t have to fix it yourself.

Experts exist to do it for you — better, faster, cheaper. But if you care enough to spend the time and effort to fix it yourself, you will take away some things that matter.

You’ll understand it better. You’ll appreciate it more. You’ll build your skill set. You’ll grow your confidence. You’ll be able to commiserate with others about it. You’ll have a story.

Sometimes, you should fix it yourself.

“To revolutionize the embedded development industry by delivering innovative DevOps solutions that streamline workflows, empower developers, and delight customers. We are committed to modernizing embedded development practices, relieving operational burdens, and consistently providing exceptional value.”

In some ways, mission statements are meaningless cliches. You can say what you want because does it really matter? Does a mission statement make a difference? 

But also, if you care, your mission statement can perform a few important jobs for you:

1. It can provide the North Star when you’re face down in the muck, at night, in the rain, and have no idea which way is up.
2. It can signal to your audience that you might be the people that can solve their problems.

In order for a mission statement to perform either of these tasks, or mean anything at all, you gotta believe it. You gotta be proud of it. You gotta act on it.

Action is everything. 

What’s the value of something? Is that the same as it’s worth? 

When I visited my grandfather as a kid, we’d spend some time with his stamp collection. I loved the smell, the shoeboxes full of colorful unsorted potential treasure, the neatly arranged books of post-sorted commemoratives, first-day covers, and plate blocks, the stories behind the images on the stamps, and being a voyeur to a person with a passion project. 

I had various jobs. One job was to slog through the shoeboxes full of loose stamps and sort what I found — US 1 centers in this pile, 1960s UK with Queen Elizabeth in another, etc. My other job was to take sorted piles and cross-reference them against the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue to generate an estimated value. To do so, I had to find the match in the catalog through its objective characteristics — US, green, 1 cent, Ben Franklin — and then make an assessment of its quality. 

Determining quality was a subjective exercise bounded by some pseudo-objective guidelines. Is it used? Is it postmarked? What is the condition of the perforations? How about the shade of the color and the crispness of the image? Is that a desirable and unique flaw, or just a pedestrian flaw?

I’d come up with a number and show it to my grandfather. 

“This pile here is worth about $24.50.”

He’d take a look and quickly assess my assessment for himself. 

“Eh, maybe I could get half of that.”
“But then why does the catalog say $24.50?”
“The catalog shows retail value. You can’t actually get retail value. You’ll only get what someone will be willing to pay.” 

Huh? Willing to pay? My ten years of experience with our transactional economy included, to this point, only price tags and cashiers. Here’s the listed price. I hand that much to the cashier and walk out with the thing. 

What does “willing to pay” mean?

One time, he rummaged through his cabinet, pulled out a unique, longish box, and handed it to me. 

“It’s been a while since I’ve assessed what this lot here is worth. Maybe you can take a stab at it.”

I opened it to reveal hundreds of first-day covers encased in cellophane wrappers. All from northeastern Pennsylvania. I grabbed the catalog and went to work. The problem I found was that the catalog was equal parts vague (ie, missing much of what I found in his collection) and ultra-specific (ie, the catalog showed only a particular cover with the stamp in question).

After an hour or so, I wasn’t making much progress.

“I don’t how to come up with a value.”
“Yeah, I figured as much. Here’s the next lesson…”

And he explained that this part of his collection was his personal favorite. He had spent a lot of time, effort, and money building it up to what it was. Our family has roots in NE PA and he found this intersection of philatelic history and personal history interesting and nostalgic. He just liked it. 

It had a lot of personal value to him but didn’t necessarily have much value to anybody else.

So what’s it worth? Only what someone else is willing to pay.

What’s your product or service’s value and worth? Find the people who value what you do. 

All three bring unique value to your new venture.

Need strategic direction, industry insight, or reaching into a network? Get yourself an advisor.
Need to learn, grow, or get better? Hire a coach.
Need financial support? Find an investor.

Each comes with a set of pros and cons.

Advisors provide wisdom, experience, perspective, and a network. But they’re not invested in your success in any material way. If you fail, oh well, that’s a shame.

Coaches help you identify and overcome your shortcomings, hold you accountable, and can provide tools and techniques. But they’re only invested in your success to the extent that they can use you as a testimonial. If you fail, you’re just an omission.

Investors provide the fuel (capital), likely strategy, and a network. They are deeply invested in your success, so they 100% want you to succeed. But that can lead to overbearing control of you and your venture. If you fail, you’re in trouble. If you succeed, you might still be in trouble.

You probably want one or more of these types of people along the way. Just remember, they don’t necessarily see what you see.

That’s all on you.

We just launched our company. 

To make it official with the government, the financial system, and customers, we needed a name. It doesn’t exist unless it has a name.

“What goes on the paperwork?” 
“Who do I make the check out to?”
“What do I say when I’m talking about us?”

So we went through that exercise. Even though the four of us have worked together for almost 10 years, we had to collaborate on ideas and in areas we’d never considered. Feelings, perspectives, and personal meaning were all on the table, in addition to practical considerations such as domain availability. It was bumpy, but we got there. Of course, we did; we always do. 

Then, we commissioned a logo. That went pretty darn smooth. We had the right partner on this one.

But now, what is our brand?

Because your brand is not your name or your logo. Once you’ve established your brand, then the logo or the name can invoke it. Not the other way around. You can’t establish your brand with a great name or a great logo. They’re just reminders. At launch, they don’t matter.

Brand, however, does matter. Immensely. In fact, at launch, it might be the most important thing.

So get clear on your brand.

“What do you do?”
“What do you stand for?”
“Who is it for?”
“What do you believe and what do they believe?”
“How do you help?”
“What tension do you relieve?”
“What will they say about you?”

Somedays, you wake up, and you’re energized and confident.

Some days, it’s the opposite. You’re drained and insecure. You’re in the swoon, and the swoon can derail you for a few hours, a few days, or your entire project.

First, acknowledge it. It’s here, and you’re in it. You’re not the first or the last. There’s nothing inherently wrong with you.

Second, remember this: Even though The World talks about launching your project, that’s not how it’s done. You don’t launch your company, book, or program.

You build it. Customer by customer. Paragraph by paragraph. Lesson by lesson.

Keep talking to people. Keep writing. Keep learning.

Hard times are undefeated.

Hard times can teach, hone, and elevate. Or they can overwhelm, crush, and cripple.

Hard times are coming. Not if. When.

How will you respond?

The CEO of Lattice made this announcement a few days ago:

Today, Lattice made history to become the first company to lead in the responsible employment of AI “digital workers” by creating a digital employee record to govern them with transparency and accountability. 

The idea of AI employees, or “digital workers,” is not an entirely comfortable one esp as we seem them being personified.The inevitable arrival of these digital workers raises important questions about their integration, measurement, and impact on human jobs. And many of those questions are without clear answers or precedence.

Within Lattice’s people platform, “digital workers” will be securely onboarded, trained, and assigned goals, performance metrics, appropriate systems access, and even an accountable manager. We know this process will raise a lot of questions and we don’t yet have all the answers, but we want to help our customers find them. And we want to bring everyone along on this journey with us.

AI isn’t human. AI aren’t humans. AI isn’t a human resource. 

AI isn’t a team member with a family, feelings, a desire for purpose, good days, bad days, tragedies, triumphs, vacations, and dreams. 

Does AI being applied to one’s company tasks require management, evaluation, and record keeping? Sure, but AI doesn’tneed an employee record in the human resource system. 

Square peg. Round hole. 

It’s easy and tempting to assume that others are out to get us.

But really they just don’t see what we see, and consequently, they don’t care.

If we want others to care about what we care about, we need to help them see what we see.

AI dominates the zeitgeist.

• By 2025, AI is expected to displace around 85 million jobs but create 97 million new ones.
• AI projects to contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.
• Nearly 70% of companies are expected to adopt AI technology by 2030.
• Global AI investment is forecast to approach $200 billion by 2025.
• The AI industry value is projected to increase by over 13x in the next 7 years, reaching $1.81 trillion by 2030
• AI has generated over 100 million music tracks already.
• Over 4.2 billion AI digital voice assistants are currently in use.
• AI-driven recommendation systems are used by 80% of the content watched on Netflix.
• By 2025, up to 90% of online content may be generated by AI.
• AI is currently capable of accurately diagnosing diseases in 87% of cases, compared to an 86% accuracy rate for human diagnosis.
• Legal predictive analytics can already forecast case outcomes with 70-80% accuracy.
• One megalomaniac believes that unregulated AI will become a massive existential threat.

Are you engaged in the conversation?

I loved the Weekly World News when I was in college.

“Alien Bible Found, They Worship Oprah”
“Bat Boy Found in Cave!”
“Bigfoot Kept Lumberjack as Love Slave!”

I sure did love to stand in the checkout line and give it a once-over. The Bat Boy even made a brief splash on Penn State culture, as he/she/it turned up as several Halloween costumes that year.

But this was the Weekly World News. Expectations set and met.

Hyperbole has always been used in marketing and sales copy, including legit newspaper headlines. The snake oil salesman and the paperboy have always had to figure out how to extract the mark’s dollars. Hyperbole was one of his tools in the toolbox. 

Hyperbole grabs eyes and clicks. It always has. AI makes hyperbole effortless and scalable. 

A caution: Be careful how you position your product or service because you might just have to live up to it.

One perspective is that you do what you do for you.

Another is that you do what you do for someone else.

My guess is that, at its core, it’s both. In both cases, what you do is an opportunity to serve. The opportunity to serve is a privilege. It’s what transforms tasks into contributions.

You’ve seen great service. You’ve been on the receiving end. You know what it looks like and what it feels like.

Each time you pick up your drill, phone, or spreadsheet to do what you do, you have an opportunity to serve. What will it look like?

One way to look at all ventures is from the outside in. What are the objective or historical odds of success?

• Powerball: 1 in 292201338
• Roulette (single number hit): 1 in 38
• Blackjack: 100 in 237
• Survive a skydive: 199999 in 200000
• High School player making it to the major leagues: 1 in 6600
• Earn more than $100k per year in an MLM: 1 in 909
• Earn more than $100k per year as a musician: 1 in 1000
• Landscaping startup: 1 in 7
• Tech startup: 1 in 10

You can look at that list and decide which you think is the best investment.

However, it’s not that simple, is it?

For some things, you can measure success on a sliding scale rather than binary. For some things, only you can define success. For some things, you can create an environment more conducive to success. For some things, you can inherit or develop the necessary personal skills for success. For some things, luck may lead to success. 

Can you beat the odds?

Always going out for ice cream is a great hack for your health.

What?

But I can get a half-gallon of ice cream at the grocery store for the same price as a single cone at the ice cream shop. Why would I do that?

1. If you buy a cone at the ice cream shop, how much will you eat? If you buy a half-gallon at the grocery store, guess how much you’re gonna eat?
2. The ice cream shop is 3-10X more expensive, therefore, how often will you do it?
3. How many memories will you make, or how much social benefit do you get from eating an oversized bowl on your couch in your PJs a half-hour before bed?

Always go out for ice cream. 

There’s a budget for everything, and everything is limited. 

Finances, yes, of course. But also time, happiness, energy, giving a shit, distraction, and outrage. 

Whenever you start a project, interact with others, open email, pick up your phone, walk into a bar, or turn on the news, you should ask yourself, “What’s my budget?”

If it sounds simple, you’ve done your job.

That’s your goal, by the way — with your teaching, marketing, presentions, website, and product itself. The complexity is there, of course. Complexity is always conserved. You’re solving hard problems. 

Does your audience understand you? Do they also have the problems you are solving? Can they see themselves using your product? Does it feel right to them? Does it sound simple?

The superpowers of famous physicists like Einstein, Feynman, and Sagan was their ability to make us understand it. To make it sound so simple. 

When you’re able to make it sound simple, that’s when you know you really understand it yourself.

In the early 2000s I applied to be an astronaut. 

I wish I had an interesting story to tell about the screening and selection process — what I learned in talking with the interviewers; cool stuff I got to see; interesting people I met along the way; some nugget of wisdom that has shaped my journey since.

But I got nothing. NASA rejected me almost instantaneously. I never even spoke to a person. Didn’t get past step one. If I had been chosen, I would have been part of either Astronaut Group 19 or 20. 

Astronaut selection is and has always been the ultimate exercise in fitting a precise mold. It’s been true ever since the Mercury 7 were chosen in 1959. The mold has changed shape, but the rigor of the selection process behind it has not.

Your fate is out of your hands. You must be what they want. You must be chosen. 

What if you don’t fit the mold? What if you don’t get chosen?

Choose yourself. Oh, yeah. That’s what I learned.

Almost every discussion with a provider, expert, or consultant starts with “What are your goals?”

Goals. Objectives. KPIs.

Define. Measure. Achieve.

Unfortunately, in the strictest sense, I’ve failed at many (most?) of my goals. So, am I a failure? I’ve felt that way sometimes.

What if, instead, goals are really just a prescription for growth. Go this way, in this direction, toward that marker on the hill up there. You might not make it (you probably won’t), but what you will learn along the way will be immeasurably valuable. You’ll experience wonder. You’ll find purpose. You’ll meet others. You’ll do things you never thought you could.

The purpose of goals isn’t necessarily attainment. It’s growth.

One way to think about it is, “It’s not a big deal if I say no. I’ll just stay here, in my lane. What’s gonna happen if I say no? Nothing, that’s what.”

And those around you probably agree, solidifying what you know to be the right answer. Your comfort zone will certainly agree. Because you’re right.

But the other way to think about it is, “I don’t have to. It’s not a big deal if I don’t. But what if I do?”

Those around you probably won’t agree because the current you is the you they understand — the predictable you. The World needs to make sense or it throws us into turmoil. Predictability thwarts turmoil.

If you ask yourself, “But what if I do?” and those around you start to squirm, that might be a warning you should heed. These people care about you.

But also, it might be a good sign.

Dictator for Life: Julius Caeser

Universal Ruler: Genghis Khan

Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution: Muammar Gaddafi

His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular: Idi Amin

Technoking of Tesla: Elon Musk

Chief Happiness Officer: Tony Hsieh

Chief Virgin: Richard Branson

Block Head: Jack Dorsey

Like your name, your title is a proclamation of identity. A good title helps people know something about you even if they haven’t met you. Could be good or bad. 

You’re in charge of your title. 

Being ahead of the curve can help you win.

You could win if you bought a tractor while your neighbors were still using an ox. You could win if you understood search engine optimization at the beginning of Google. You could win if you were using LLM AI to screen candidates a year ago.

Early adopters can have an advantage. The playing field tilts in their direction.

But eventually, everyone has a tractor, figures out SEO, and uses the same AI tools to screen candidates.

Now you’re behind the curve.

We often use late bloomer as an apology or an excuse.

The pre-pubescent teenager who mixes awkwardly with the cool kids. The unpopular high school girl who becomes a fashion model. The young adult who hops from job to job. The mid-life career switcher. The old man who publishes his first novel.

We view them and their actions through a lens of standard societal expectations of age. You mature at a young age. You determine what you want to do with your life at a young age. You do your best work at a young age. You are who you are at a young age, and it carries on throughout your entire life.

A friend of mine who never moved out of his hometown once told me he sometimes wished he’d had because “I can’t escape the 17-year-old me. Everyone still thinks of me as 17. I hate the 17-year old me.”

Doesn’t each of us have our own timeline?

It’s never too late to bloom.

Today’s the day. Today, we launch.

It’s exciting. It’s scary. It’s stressful. It’s hopeful.

The sky’s the limit. The hill is steep. The road is bumpy. The views are spectacular.

Today’s the day I’ve been looking forward to for almost my entire career.

Today, we launch.

Last week, I sat in a waiting room for what felt like an unusually long time.

You’ve been there. For each type of waiting room you sit in, you have a built-in “how long feels right” clock in your head cemented through years of experience and redundancy. If you get called before that time, you’re delighted. If it takes longer, you’re annoyed.

OK, so I’m annoyed, and I’ve left my phone in the car.

There’s some random TV in the corner across the room, but honestly, what’s TV? Who could possibly care about or engage with the moving pictures spewing forth from that thing? It could be a benign fixer-upper show or some ad trying to make me a better man through chemistry. Hard to tell.

I scout the end tables for an interesting magazine. In pre-phone days, I never minded sitting in waiting rooms that offered interesting magazines. Sports Illustrated, Time, and Outside were my gotos. Thoughtful and well-crafted journalism, storytelling, and writing in general. Good magazine articles served a niche between the newspaper and narrative non-fiction and comprised the important pieces of both. I both learned and felt something. Sometimes, while engrossed in a good magazine article, I’d be disappointed when they called my name.

But nothing here. Not one magazine. There’s a few pharma advertising cards laying around, but that’s it. Oh, maybe there’s a rack in a central location. Nope.

I miss magazines in waiting rooms.

Locks are impervious to us mere mortals — the front door people.

But not for a locksmith.

In today’s complex world, the systems we’ve been trained to use and guide our procedural living look impervious.

My credit card didn’t work.
I can’t get into the website.
The website won’t let me do that.
The curriculum says I have to take this class, and I can’t take that one.
The professor gave me this grade.
This paper here says I must do it this way.
The job description indicates I need these credentials.

It’s easy to get lulled into thinking there’s no way to fix it, get around it, get into it, or circumvent the published rules.

But there’s always a locksmith.

The locksmith doesn’t work for free, however. He will test you to determine how committed and worthy you are — a turbulent sea of automated menu options to navigate, circular website links, and inconvenient office schedules.

It’s worth it, though. Keep clicking till you find a phone number. Pick up the phone and fight through the menu system. Walk into her office with a book and stay till she shows up.

The locksmith has the power.

We know the earth isn’t flat, but it’s useful to assume it is when building your patio.
No history books detail a time in which the tortoise beat the hare, but it’s useful to assume it did when teaching about steady effort, overconfidence, persistence, and focus.

We could count the number of grains of sand on the beach in Salvo, NC and find its true value, but it’s not very useful.
A true answer exists to the question of whether or not we’re in a simulation, but it’s not very useful.

We’re humans. We have a constant battle being waged in our emotional being. As a result, we sometimes fail to focus on the useful and get hung up on what we think is the truth.

As a leader, your job is to acknowledge the truth but find the useful.

The promise of the AI brand is that it will either save us/kill us all. It has done neither. Any time saved by AI has mostly been chewed up listening to breathless media reports on management (or lack thereof) drama at Microsoft AI (some people call it OpenAI). The brand is the offspring of capitalism and the Bravo Channel. Staggering increases in shareholder value mixed with IP theft, hallucinations, and constant catastrophizing. It’s as if Rupert Murdoch got married, for a sixth time, to SkyNet. I’m especially proud of the previous sentence.

Scott Galloway, No Mercy/No Malice

Hey Scott, you should be proud of that sentence. It’s at once hilarious and insightful. 

Although I hate talking to my devices, I’m happy that Apple is jumping into the AI game by integrating ChatGPT into my phone. Why? 

Fast followers often win in the market. Who has been the best fast follower in the last 40 years? Well, it’s Apple, of course. They don’t invent the technologies. They just skin them better for all of us and print the money. 

If Apple hasn’t lost all of its core DNA yet (I’m not exactly sure, though), my iPhone and my MacBook will be more useful to me with ChatGPT than just about any other device on the planet except my 18V, 4 A-h drill.

Aren’t I worried about data privacy (yes), AI taking my job (nope), and the machines waking up (not at all)?

Devices are morons. Even devices with neural networks. Artificial Intelligence or Apple Intelligence has no intelligence. It’s not going to save us. It’s not going to kill us. All of that posturing rhetoric is to sell influence through hope and fear, not inform us in any useful way.

Humans save us, kill us, and define the value of work. No amount of device intelligence will change that.  

“What should we charge?”

If you’re an established service, all you need is a calculator. You can use a simple equation based on costs and time.
If you’re building a product, it’s probably not as simple an equation, but based on what the market will pay. A spreadsheet will help you here. If this, then that.

The problem isn’t actually deciding what to charge.

The problem is deciding what you’re worth.

We love to root for the little guy. 

When the big guy loses, it feels like justice. We’re excited at the unexpectedness, and we love to stick it to the man because the man is always out to get us and keep us down. Rock-n-roll might not exist without the man. For sure, Harley-Davidson wouldn’t.

We see the man — the institution, the elite, the system, the organization, the giant corporation, the Yankees — as an evil force. Faceless, soulless, and malevolent. When they lose, we delight in their suffering. 

The man, however, is made up of men…and women. Humans with names, faces, families, feelings, and T-Ball games. 

I don’t understand Schadenfreude on an intellectual level, but I understand it on an emotional level. It feels good when you win and someone else loses. At least for a few minutes. But once you lean into empathy, you can begin to see the faces. Each face has a story.

True progress comes when we move beyond the simple, toggle-switch narratives to a place where everyone has a name and a face. 

That’s how we win. 

“We got 3 months.”

Although the 3-month lens dooms many companies — or if not dooms, then at least shackles them in a cycle of short-sightedness and missed opportunities — it can also be exactly the catalyst that you need.

Time is a sneaky variable. You can feel like you have enough, and then you get complacent or take your eye off the ball.

Ninety days puts a box around it. A frame, outside of which you don’t care. Now you can focus and eliminate all other distractions.

“If we spend this money, will we get a return in 3 months?”
“If we choose this path, will it help us finish in 3 months?”
“If we pick blue instead of green, will we grow in 3 months?”

Burn the ships. Damn the torpedos. You got 3 months.

When I was a teenager, I had a plastic camera that took 110 film cartridges. I snapped random shots on our vacations or during the typical teenage events at the time.

I always bought Kodak film cartridges. I didn’t know there were any other brands.

You also knew Kodak and you also bought their film. They were ubiquitous. At its height in the mid-90s, Kodak had revenues of around $16 billion. Almost $11 billion came from selling and processing film.

Did you know Kodak invented the first digital camera? They also were the technology leaders in the space in the 80s and 90s.

But then they tanked their digital technology. On purpose.

Smart people decided that it would be dumb to cannibalize the core of the company. Why push digital photography when we make all of our money on film? What would the street think?

Makes sense. Hard to argue and easy to make the case.

Especially if you view your business through the 3-month lens of the public trading floor.

There’s no unexpected plot twist coming. You know how it ends for Kodak. They still exist, but its been a rough ride. They’ve been through bankruptcy and in 2023, brought in around $1 billion (and trending down). They’ve turned into primarily a commercial printing and chemical company.

The trouble with the 3-month lens is that it demands output and success right away. Make the decision that maximizes the next 3 months.

The future be damned.

Was Hitler’s birth the cause of WWII?
If you’re hit by a car on the way to buy a pack of cigarettes, did smoking cause your death?
Would we have airplanes without Orville and Wilbur Wright?
Will your trip to the grocery store in your 1966 Mustang cause the 100-year snowstorm in the midwest?
If you sleep less than 8 hours per day, will you get cancer?

AI is great at two things that humans aren’t: a) performing bajillions of iterations and computations, and 2) scaling capability with minimal cost (i.e., more compute resources are cheap).

The answers to the questions above, if answerable at all, lie in the realm of chaos theory — complex, multi-variable, interconnected, non-linear systems.

So, let’s apply AI to them. AI is built for chaos.

Unfortunately, we probably won’t learn the definitive answers because the systems are non-deterministic.

We will, however, learn some things we probably don’t know today. Factors that we’re either not thinking about, or not focused on, but may have large effects. Also, factors that we’re currently focused on, but probably aren’t important. So it’s worth going down this road and AI is a great partner.

However, when you look at the questions up front, you probably already have your answer for one or more of them. How is that?

Because solutions to chaotic, complex, non-deterministic systems aren’t toggle-switch, single-cause, or definitive. They are dependent upon time, space, and perspective.

We, the humans, provide the perspective.

We’ve created a roadmap for our product and business.

It’s the culmination of many discussions, arguments, and efforts. We like it. We think and feel good about it. 

Do we put the blinders on, buckle down, and don’t pick our heads up till we’ve realized the implementation?
Or do we start down that path but keep our heads up and ears open and re-evaluate our priorities and roadmap at each step?

Having a direction, goal, and purpose is important because distraction and constant re-evaluation can derail you just as quickly as going in the wrong direction. However, flexibility and openness are the only ways to ensure you don’t start in the wrong direction. 

Failure is a tractor beam. It’s hard to break free once you’re in its clutches. 

Your job, as the leader, is to determine how to stay out of the tractor beam, recognize when you’re caught in it, and fight like hell to break it’s grasp.

Don’t wag the team around. Keep them focused and heads down. You keep your head up and ears open. If you need to, don’t be afraid to get them moving in a different direction. 

Authority is everywhere, but which do you recognize?

Do you recognize the authority of the laws of your town, state, and country? What about the international laws? Humanitarian laws?

Do you recognize the authority of experts and thought leaders in institutions, industry, and systems? Professors, doctors, physicists, engineers, pastors, your neighbor who runs the book club?

Do you recognize the authority of others in your family? Elders, spouses, or that Uncle that plans the family reunions?

Do you recognize the authority of the chain of command? Bosses, Generals, coaches, and the captain of your team?

Do you recognize the authority of ancient or special texts? The Constitution, the Bible, the Qur’an?

I sometimes wonder if all of our profile bios should indicate the authorities we recognize.

This is obviously a template or AI-generated “first-touch” message.

Hi John,

It’s great connecting with you. How have you been?

When I receive it, I ignore it. There are two problems with it: a) if it were someone I actually knew, they wouldn’t use the “connecting with you” phrase, and b) if it’s someone I don’t know, I know they don’t care how I’ve been.

We’re adults and professionals. It’s ok to use the platform to network and find potential clients. Let’s not pretend or waste time. If you’re just trying to grow your network, say it. If you think I might be a potential sales target, say it. If there is something about my profile or background that does interest you, say it.

Let’s sound human. Leave the other stuff to AI. 

I’ve spent a good deal of time and effort over my career learning how to make myself, my teams, and the teams around me more productive.

In fact, my current venture is fundamentally about helping small software teams be more productive. My team and I have been working on and building our product for almost 10 years. We’re pretty darn good at it.

I’ve talked a lot about productivity in this space — time prioritization, working from home, leadership, procrastination, AI, etc. While I stand behind all of it, in some ways, these are strategies and tools that nip around the edges. They’re accelerators and ways to be more efficient. Not quite as insignificant as cleaning up the mouse poop in a room full of elephant dung, but there is an assumption that the person, leader, or team has a fundamental quality.

Purpose.

Purpose is an engine. Purpose is grease. Purpose can’t be stopped.

Everybody is productive when they have purpose.

Search. Internet and data.

The best at it? perplexity.ai. You should try it.

As Seth says, “Perplexity is more powerful, more pleasant and more effective.”

He’s right. I came to that same conclusion independently and coincidently. I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now. 

No ads. Conversational results, but also all sources cited and easily seen. It’s awesome. 

I mentioned before AI is sneaky stupid because it looks smart, like it knows everything, and like it can solve all of our problems. It’s a bit like the blow-hard teenager puffing out its chest. But we’re not exactly sure what we can or should do with it. The scope is too large. 

Not so with Perplexity. It claims to do one thing: search. Perplexity isn’t coming for your job.

This is the best use of AI right now and an easy introduction to all those who have been hesitant to jump in.

In the early 00s, I worked on developing Bluetooth. My company, Agere Systems, was an early licensee of the technology, and we were building a chip and firmware to sell to computer and consumer electronics companies. I suspect you had never heard of something called Bluetooth at this time.

We had some typical marketing, project, and engineering difficulties and missteps, but we were getting there. However, the market wasn’t materializing, and it wasn’t clear that it would, so the executive team made the decision to cancel the project. Zero revenue earned.

My guess is that not only do you know what Bluetooth is, but you have double-digit devices in your home that have it. Almost 6 billion Bluetooth-enabled devices will be shipped in 2024.

Bluetooth was a huge missed opportunity for Agere. All they needed to do was hang on till the market happened.

For the last almost eight years, I’ve been working in fintech. The company I worked at till recently, IDEX Biometrics, makes fingerprint sensors for credit cards.

The idea was good. Our tech is good. Our engineering team is good. Our ability to produce and deliver these sensors is good. However, my guess is that you don’t have a credit/debit card with a fingerprint sensor.

The market hasn’t developed.

Is this the same as Bluetooth? Does IDEX just need to hang on?

I don’t think so. I’d be willing to bet that you never will have a credit/debit card with a fingerprint sensor.

What’s the difference between Bluetooth and biometric sensors in credit cards?

Bluetooth is a painkiller. It filled a market and consumer need. Once it started rolling out, its usefulness and desirabitlity skyrocketed. Fingerprint sensors in credit cards are a vitamin. Only one side (the bank side) sort of wants it because it might help in one particular area (authentication). It doesn’t fill a need.

Knowing when to hang on or quit in all aspects of your life is a magical skill. One way to figure it out is to apply the painkiller or a vitamin analogy.

When I got out of college in the early 90s, I started working on satellites at GE Aerospace. Not long after starting, a colleague introduced me to the sign-off table.

The sign-off table was a physical desk in an office. Usually a drafting table to accommodate both the size and volume of the papers that accumulated. A stack of paperwork that included drawings, schematics, analyses, and memos piled up over the course of about a week. In some ways, it was the most important location within our entire facility because the sign-off table was the gate to GE getting paid.

Each set of papers required the physical signature of the responsible person. An actual person. A human with a name and a location within the building, scrawled their signature on the physical papers to indicate, “I agree this is complete, accurate, and fulfills the intention. I stand behind it.” The signature represented the person.

No money came in until that set of signatures was delivered.

The sign-off table generated tons of drama.

“You can’t sign off on that yet!”
“There is no way I’m putting my signature on that like it is!”
“Why hasn’t she signed off on this yet?”
“Can you believe he signed off on that?”

If it was you who had to sign off, your signature mattered. You thought about it. It meant something to both you and the team. Because your signature represented you, the person. And you mattered.

What does our signature represent today in the world of e-signatures, PIN numbers, and click-this-checkbox-to-sign? I even have a bitmap image of my signature stored in my computer that I can simply copy and paste into a document.

Was it really me that signed it? Am I putting my stamp of approval on it? Am I standing behind it? Does it matter?

Although I sure do love the convenience of these new forms of signature, I think we’ve lost a little bit of the human.

We get all excited about inventors and first to market, but sometimes, fast follower is the best strategy.

In the early 2000’s, the company where I worked (called Agere Systems at the time) was the partial inventor of and first to market with a technology that ultimately transformed everyday life for most of the globe. We called it WaveLAN, and then bewilderingly, ORiNOCO. My guess is you’ve never heard of WaveLAN or ORiNOCO.

But you know it by the more ubiquitous term, WiFi. 

At the time, WiFi wasn’t a thing. Not only the term, but the technology itself — unless you had Apple gear. They were the first one’s to push wireless networking into the consumer world at scale. They called it AirPort and it comprised almost 100% of the early consumer WiFi market.

Our stuff, i.e., Agere’s WaveLAN, was inside all of the Apple products — the desktops, laptops, and the wireless router itself (called AirPort BaseStation). We had a one-size-fits-all solution for all three components. Therefore, we also enjoyed almost 100% of the early consumer WiFi market. At its largest, the WaveLAN business for Agere was between $300 and $400 million. Thank you, Apple.

And within about 18 months, the WaveLAN business went from almost $400 million to zero. Totally gone. 18 months.

Our solution, although functionally solid as a system, was expensive, power-hungry, kludgy, difficult to program, and required a ton of engineering customization throughout the entire system, from the IC design and manufacture to embedded and application software and the PCB board design. We filled in sinkholes and shortcomings in one area of the system by making adjustments in another. 

Then, once the market was established, more computer and router companies jumped in. To support them, more semiconductor companies jumped in to improve on the shortcomings of our system. The IEEE 802.11 spec continued to evolve and new versions came out that increased speed and took less power.

We just couldn’t keep up. Our initial solution was basically a one-off that relied so heavily on our vertical integration, that not only couldn’t we quickly introduce new features, we couldn’t scale. We lost it all.

The fast followers ate our shorts.

Being second in the market has some advantages. You get to see where the first one made mistakes. You get to think about how to apply economies of scale. You get to see what customers really care about. You get to move the state of the art forward in the areas that matter.

First is sexy, but second may win the day.

Apple just announced Apple Intelligence.

Intelligence is an interesting and clever description. Good marketing, as usual. 

(several definitions of intelligence from around the web)

intelligence /ĭn-tĕl′ə-jəns/
noun

1. The ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge.
2. Skilled use of reason
3. Mental acuteness

Is AI actually intelligent? 

It can acquire knowledge. It can use knowledge. It can reason if, by reason, we mean applying statistics and algorithms to data to draw conclusions. It certainly has acuteness, which is associated with memory and focus. 

But it can’t understand. Not the way we do.

Understanding requires comprehension of the existential world around us. Experiences, emotions, consequences, seasons, geography, physical space, relationships — all required for understanding.

As a user, I’m happy that AI is being integrated into my phone and computer OS’s. But also, I’m under no illusion that my devices are intelligent.

AI lacks awareness.
AI has incomplete, corrupt, or biased training data.
AI’s objectives are unclear.
AI utilizes finite machinery.
AI’s underbelly is opaque.
AI doesn’t care about anything.
AI gets bad input.

These are all reasons that AI makes mistakes. So do we.

Where can you plug your humanity in so as not to make the same mistakes as AI?

I was asked that the other day.

It caught me off guard because what do you say? What’s the context? Who’s asking? When? What do they care about?

Like you, I’m many different things, but does “who” ever change?

I’m still working on it.

What’s the cost of a mistake?

Sometimes, it’s almost nothing. If I spell a wrod wrong in this article, nobody’s gonna care.

Sometimes, it’s life and death. If the mechanic neglects to secure the lug nuts or the heart surgeon skips a step, somebody’s life is in danger.

Most of the time, it’s somewhere in the middle, and you can measure it in terms of dollars, time, or reputation. You get to decide which axis matters most to you. But also, your customers, partners, family, and team get to decide what matters most to them. The beauty of existential experience. Are you sync’d up?

Your job is to ensure that you minimize the chances of high-cost mistakes. You can invest in systems to do so — education, procedures, tools, automation, and redundancy. Installing systems also costs dollars, time, and reputation.

Should we build the robot and write the code to automate this testing?
Should we buy the robot and automated test tool?
Should we buy another mower so we can keep mowing if this one breaks?
Should we get AWS certified?
Should we outsource this part of our process?

Systems cost you on the front-end. Mistakes cost you on the back-end.

You get to decide which is more expensive.

Seeing the official notice is jarring.

It’s not surprising. You knew it was coming.

The bell tolls. The end of an era. The end of your time in this organization, with this community. You poured yourself into this place. You built great stuff, a great team, and great relationships. You’ve bled and sweat with these people. It wasn’t your fault, but also it wasn’t enough.

It’s necessary. Growth requires it. Your journey requires it. You will be OK, probably even better. So will they.

When the bell tolls, listen, feel, step off the old path, and head out on the new one.

Does this look familiar?

You: OK, great! I’ll send you the invite for tomorrow at 3.
Them: Sounds good. Looking forward to it.

And then silence. Or worse, they accept the meeting but then ghost you.

How about this one?

You: To confirm, you’ll have this ready for tomorrow?
Them: Yes! It’s my highest priority.

Tomorrow rolls around, and nothing. Or maybe it’s “done,” but it’s not what you discussed and certainly not what you need.

Ever been here?

You: So you’ll help introduce me to that person?
Them: Yes, of course! I’d be happy to help.

And then it never happens.

We’re quick to judge. We feel like the other person is lazy or incompetent. We get frustrated, and we complain to the poor souls who happen to be standing around within earshot.

It’s not true. The other person isn’t lazy or incompetent. 

What is true, however, is that the other person doesn’t care about our thing as much as we do. How could they? They’re not us.

As Seth Godin says, “The person we’re counting on doesn’t see what we see, doesn’t know what we know and might not even want what we want.”

There are two important leadership lessons here. The first is that when counting on someone else to help, I need to create the conditions for success. The second is that I need to care about them first.

Both of those are my jobs. 

Barreling ahead: Unstoppable. Force of will. Make it happen. My way or the highway.

Laying back: Patience. Conservation. Waiting for the right time. What do you think?

Which do you apply and when? Exactly, that’s the question. 

I find my comfort zone is the best guide.

In hindsight, I can see how the comfort zone has shaped my journey. I recognize the little monuments of both growth and regression over my path that directly related to my level of comfort. Most times I grew, made progress, or ended up better, it was because I stepped out or was forced out of my comfort zone. I can also look back and regret the opportunities missed or not taken because I was too afraid to test the waters outside the comfort zone.

Which feels more uncomfortable in the moment?

Do the uncomfortable. 

Every business is in the business of customer service.

The customer isn’t always right, but it would be almost impossible to overstate how important customer service is to your business. 

What does your customer want?

On the one hand, they want the principle of least astonishment. If you run a $$$$ restaurant with linen tablecloths, you shouldn’t serve your wine in pink plastic kids’ cups, and you shouldn’t ignore them for 90 minutes. Your customers have some expectations of the environment you will provide. 

But on the other hand, they want to be delighted. To delight them, you may indeed wish to astonish them. It’s all about the axis on which you choose to astonish.

The magic of competing in your marketplace is to know which axes require least astonishment and which axes are ripe for astonishment. This rings true whether you’re a restaurant, tire installer, accounting firm, or software company.

You should know which is which. 

If you’re trying to do or make something for someone else, you’ll either be judged or you’ll be ignored.

We say we don’t like being judged. I certainly say that.

Being ignored is the alternative. It’s certainly more comfortable to be ignored. No risk. Very safe. Won’t make you distracted as you sit comfortably on your couch in the evening.

But is that better?

The best time to start, buy the real estate, max out your retirement savings, build your network, eat healthy, train for a marathon, or find a mentor was before.

The 2nd best time is now.

Don’t let the 2nd best time go to waste. It’s severely underrated.

The paradox of social media is the echo chamber.

Social media algorithms are really good at showing us the entire world while at the same time narrowing our view of it. If you engage, even passively, you start to get more of what you want, think, and feel.

The more you get what you want, the easier it is to nod along. Nodding along is about rightness and righteousness. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, I’m right. And with social media, you can nod along without incurring any risk.

Is this a feature or bug of social media?

When you’re nodding along in person, you incur risk, even if you’re in a group and enjoying the benefits of safety in numbers.

You’re standing with others. This side of the line, not that side. My sign says I’m with these people. People can see you. People can point at you. You have to walk back down the street or get into your car once you’re done nodding along.

So, is it a feature or a bug?

Neither. It’s a mirror. Social media reflects not just our desires but our fears. It doesn’t just amplify our voices; it echoes our silence. The real question is our willingness to engage with risk.

When we look in the mirror, are we happy nodding along?

I had something happen today that was hard to believe. I’m still not quite sure I do.

The mid-50s engineer in me is a bit cynical: That can’t be right. What’s the catch? That’s how they get ya.

But the other guy, the little flicker of the guy I want to be, wants to believe it. He’s a little wary but in a trust-but-verify way.

Belief is hard. Hard to believe is easy.

Sometimes you gotta take the hard way.

When someone asks me what I do for a living, I usually say, “I’m a typer.”

Software development, like many jobs today, is just typing. But is it?

How many times have you looked at someone else in your company and thought, “that job is easy,” or “I could do that job better than them.”

That might be true, but remember, your job is also just typing.

Hollywood loves making movies about serendipity.

RomComs, of course. Serendipity is almost always the inciting incident in a RomCom. However, most other genres also use serendipity to either throw the characters into the action or provide a critical piece to the puzzle along the journey. 

Because serendipity makes a great story.

Is it chance? Is it fate? Is it Providence? Is it some other over-arching force from the Universe that wants it to happen?

It taps into something deep inside us. We want to believe in destiny, that someone or something is watching over us, and that our lives have a greater purpose. We want to believe we can win the lottery. We can picture ourselves with the great big check in our hands as we stand at the front of the room full of flash bulbs. We dream about serendipity. 

Serendipity makes it all change in a heartbeat. One minute, you’re A. The next, you’re B. And B is amazing. 

But progress rarely happens due to serendipity in real life. 

I’m sure each of us can recall serendipitous events in our lives. Maybe even one or some of those led to something remarkable. You still tell that story. 

However, progress usually happens due to plain old incremental steps in the right (or wrong) direction. Get up today and do the work. A little better or more complete today than yesterday. 

Then, next week or next month, you look back and realize how far you’ve come.

Even if you’ve never been fishing, you’ve told fish stories. 

You know the kind of stories I’m talking about.

You catch a 6″ bass and release it back into the lake. A month later, you’re telling your buddies over beers about the 12-incher you caught. By the time you’re retelling the tale at the family reunion, that fish has become a 20″ monster that put up a fight worthy of Hemingway.

Why?

It might be rather simple. Maybe you’re just exaggerating. You’re trying to be relevant or one-up someone else with the guys. Yeah, you’re human. 

Or maybe…

You’d had a difficult week. In fact, you just got laid off, and now you don’t know what’s next. Let’s face it: you’re a failure. Your wife knows it. Your kids know it. Your friends know it. You’ve been exposed.

You and your son are at the lake, and it’s been a slow day. Nothing biting at all. Jeez, you’re even a failure at fishing. Of course you are. 

And then, you get one! Out of the blue, a bass hits the line and puts up a good fight. You get it to the boat and bring it in. Now, you’re not a total failure. That’s a win! 

When you look back on that day, you remember the win. You feel the pain that preceded it. You feel the boost to your morale.

That win felt like a 20″ monster that put up a fight worthy of Hemmingway. 

You never want to hear that.

But, on the other hand, you really do need to hear that. Because unless it sounds stupid to someone, it’s not creative, innovative, or daring enough. 

Your creativity, innovation, and courage are exactly what this world needs. That’s the only way you can move yourself, the state of the art, or your people forward. 

Yup, it better sound stupid because it just might work.

For every person who stands at the front of the stage, there was someone who worked behind the scenes.

For every person whose name is on the front of a building, there was someone, or more likely many someones, who worked behind the scenes.

For every person whose name appears on the front of the script, there was someone who worked behind the scenes.

For every person whose name is on the placard at the bottom of the trophy, there was someone who worked behind the scenes.

Read the credits. Read the memoirs or journals. Read the biography. Read the footnotes and references. That’s where you’ll find them. 

If you’re someone looking to have their name on something or stand at the front of something, you’re gonna need those someones behind the scenes. The better you are at finding, engaging, and appreciating them, the sooner your name will be there. 

As it turns out, we now have two universal solutions.

The first is AI. “We’ll just plug AI into that!” AI will solve most of our problems. It certainly is creating mountains of business opportunities.

And if you translate the headlines coming out of the pharma world, it looks like the second universal solution are GPT-1 drugs (Ozempic, WeGovy, etc).

I mean, what can’t it do?

It makes you skinny. It cures your diabetes. It helps lower your cholesterol. It also cures your heart disease and kidney disease. 

It’s the miracle drug. Let’s just plug Ozempic into that!

I think maybe, just like with AI, what Ozempic does is shine the light on humans’ current struggles and our inherent desire to move forward. To find solutions to the human problems of emotional, intellectual, and physical pain. Progression rather than conservation. There’s a lesson about humanity in there somewhere. That’s for another day.

But also, just like with AI, Ozempic doesn’t think. It doesn’t feel. It has no inherent desires or purpose. It isn’t a solution for anything without you and your pain. You’re the human, and you’re the star of the show. You can make the decisions.

Don’t ever forget that. 

“Everything is amazing and nobody is happy”

– Louis CK

Your mobile phone is a stone-cold miracle. Yes, of course, physics and blah, blah, blah…

It’s a miracle. Make no mistake.

Driving down the highway at 70 mph, you just call your friend sitting in his house 400 miles away. And it works. Oh, look at that: Bryce Harper just jacked one (seconds ago) to win it in the 10th. Did you close the garage door? I’ll check. Looks like I can get the grass cut with about 10 minutes to spare before the thunderstorm hits. Hey Siri.

Nothing demonstrates the law of conservation of complexity more than the phone in your pocket. Using your phone to do stuff is intuitive, (mostly) simple, and (mostly) just works.

But under covers, the complexity that exists is mind-boggling. ChatGPT estimates that the current iPhone required 3-4 million man-hours of engineering effort. That’s just the phone and iOS. Then add in the millions of additional engineering hours for the over 2 million applications. 

And that’s not even considering the hundreds of years of scientific research and understanding that preceded it and makes it all possible. It’s a miracle.

And now we expect it. What’s wrong with this thing? Why didn’t the dentist remind me of my appointment? Damn phone won’t connect! I don’t have service.

Our phones have simplified living in our world. And therefore, in some very tangible ways, have disconnected us from the realities of living in the physical world. Once you expect miracles, it’s hard to live without them.

So, as Louis CK says, “Will ya give it a second?”

Remember trying to install a modem or network card into your PC in 1995?

First, you had to grab your screwdriver to deconstruct and open up that machine like you were performing open-heart surgery. Once laid bare, you’d insert the new card, being careful not to zap it with ESD and render it useless, into an open ISA or PCI slot on the motherboard. Once the new board was installed, you’d reconstruct it and hope you got everything back in the proper spots. Oh shit, I forgot to put this screw back somewhere…

But that was just the beginning because the real fight was still before you. You had to come to blows with the system software to get it to recognize what you just put in there. Boot into the BIOS. Now, which PC manufacturer is this? What was the key sequence? Oh shit, I didn’t hit it fast enough. Once into the esoteric BIOS screen, you had to hunt around for the ISA/PCI settings to configure the address range and interrupt. Address range? What’s that even mean? Which interrupt? What’s an interrupt? How many times will I have to reboot? Oh shit, I must have the interrupt wrong because now it won’t even start up. 

You were poking and praying. It was trial and error. Sometimes, it took an hour. Sometimes, you never got it to work. 

Even my colleagues and I, who knew and understood what this all meant, struggled mightily to make it all work. 

Then along came USB.

I worked on the development of USB technology in its infancy. I wasn’t the inventor or a contributor to the specs or working group, but I was part of a team inside Lucent Technologies working to implement it. We were developing a USB chip and low-level software to sell to PC manufacturers. 

USB was the first PC technology during that era that said, “OK, enough! This is stupid. There’s gotta be a better way.” 

The whole point of it was to make it dumb-simple for a user to use. Therefore, the part that the user sees and interacts with has to be easy to understand, robust, and “just work.” No opening up the computer. No connector mismatch. No “is this a Dell or a Compaq?” And, most importantly, no f’n software configuration. When I plug it in, the system sees it, and it just works. Let’s go. 

But, like it is with so much in this world, a pile of complexity under the covers is required to make it simple on the outside.

We call this the conservation of complexity — every application has an inherent amount of complexity that cannot be removed. You can move it around to different areas of the system — hide it here, deal with it there — but the complexity inherently exists. 

So, who gets exposed to that complexity? Who has to deal with it?

As an engineer or anybody who makes something for someone else to use, your goal is to deal with the complexity and keep it away from your users. 

Ask yourself, “Who is my user and how can I make the right thing to do the easy thing for them to do?”

Preoccupied — A state of being so focused on a particular task, problem, or concern that it dominates one’s mental and emotional energy.

When you’re preoccupied, you’re focused, coming up with creative solutions, productive, and committed. 

But you’re also probably stressed, neglecting those around you, neglecting other responsibilities and tasks, neglecting what’s going on in the world, and not sleeping well.

Preoccupation, like so much else of our lives, is a double-edged sword. You can get there and solve the problem, but not without some cost. 

What are you willing to pay?

Software developers work with a tool called a “Source Code Control” (SCC) tool.  

Think of an SCC tool as a library card catalog system that keeps track of everything about the books. The card catalog shows you what books exist, where they are, who the author is, and who has them checked out. And in this card catalog system, you’re allowed to change the contents of the books! If anybody checks out a book and changes it, that person becomes the new author. 

When you author a change, you attach a little note that describes it. This message is called the commit message.

It looks like this:

commit 14eacff768fcf58530a65f4bee4fc8f36b251c7a (HEAD -> DEVOPSDEV-1635-modify-status-utils, origin/DEVOPSDEV-1635-modify-status-utils)

Author: John Macdonald 

Date:   Fri May 10 15:54:52 2024 -0400

    DEVOPSDEV-1635 for the love of god...

The gobbledygook at the beginning is all of the “what” info that the tool includes automatically. The engineering stuff. With it, you can learn all you need to know about what changed, by who, when, and what it looked like before the change. You can even undo any change. 

The line at the end is what I typed in as the commit message. 

The best commit messages are brief, but tell you something beyond the what. The why. The purpose. Ancillary effects. Or the author’s state of mind at the time.

You only have a few characters. What will your commit message be?

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do…Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun

– Ecclesiastes 9:7, 9

Racing to get to the end.
Why? What’s at the end?
What even is the end? Death, of course.

So why race?
Why look past what is now to get to what is later?

Presence. 
Presence is the gift. 

All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean…This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. 

Ecclesiastes 9:2-3

We’re all on the unavoidable path. We share the common destiny. 

We may live virtuously. We may live in depravity. It doesn’t matter. Death awaits us all.

But perhaps, in this shared fate, we’re called to live fully. To embrace our moments, to feel the low times, to find joy in the present, because in the end, it’s the life we’ve lived that defines us, not the inevitable end.

What does a full and authentic life look like to you? Only you can define that, but for sure, it doesn’t come from your social media feed. It doesn’t come from your neighbor. It doesn’t come from the outside. 

It comes from within. Within you and your inner circle. Within your relationship to God or the Universe or the Spirit. 

We call share common destiny. Look within to find your road. 

The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Ecclesiastes 9:11

Solomon got it (assuming Solomon wrote it).

You can plan. You can get ready. You can be wise, swift, and strong. And sometimes, it will go exactly as you predicted or prepared for. You should be prepared.

But time and chance happen to all of us.

Life has a way of surprising us. What will you do when time and chance happen? With the proper mindset, they open doors to unexpected opportunities and paths previously unknown.

I just keep telling myself this. Maybe you should too. 

In engineering, choosing a network topology affects the short-term and long-term operations, performance, reliability, and abilities of the network and its constituents.

Star Network

The hub and spoke model. Every connection runs through the critical hub. It’s simple to create and easy to maintain and can be efficient. The overall network remains unaffected if an outside node goes down. However, if the hub goes down, everything crashes and burns. 

If you’re the hub of your network, you are the one maintaining the direct relationships to your people. You control who and how deep the relationship. However, it puts a lot of pressure on you to manage all interactions, and can be vulnerable if you’re unavailable.

Ring Network

The loop model. Data moves in either direction serially through each node. It’s very efficient and predictable. It’s also easy to configure, create, and diagnose issues, as each node needs only know about two others. However, a single breakage brings the entire network down. 

You’re connected to a small number, and relying on the connections of your connections. Each person linked to the next can pay dividends without you. But if a single person drops the ball, or doesn’t care as much as you, the whole thing falls apart. 

Mesh Network

The distributed web model. Every device has a connection to every other device, either directly or indirectly. Mesh networks are complicated and costly to create and diagnose issues but offer superior resilience. Nothing can bring the entire network down. 

You’re part of a larger web of interconnected contacts. Each person is not only linked to you but also to each other. This creates a robust network where referrals and recommendations can flow freely, increasing your reach and resilience. But it requires more effort to build and maintain.

Which One?

Any of these topologies can bring you success. However, only the mesh network can help you knock it out of the park.

How will you build your mesh network?

My 19-year-old son and I were in the grocery store recently, and he said to me, “Hey, Dad, don’t you think the number of ice cream flavors has exploded since I was a little kid? It’s crazy how many there are.”

He’s right. It’s crazy. 

My Dad always talked about setting up an ice cream stand on the boardwalk at the beach with only two choices: vanilla or chocolate. And every scoop is served in a cone. No dishes here. 

He’d smile, actually relish, as he could picture the conversation with the customer who asked for something off-script, “But don’t you have anything else? What about mint chocolate chip?”

“We got vanilla, and we got chocolate. Which would you like?”

He loved talking about that. 

Vanilla and chocolate are by far the most popular ice cream flavors in America, and have been since the beginning. Most people choose one, even when presented with a potpourri of other choices. 

So why all the flavors?

Do more flavors help the ice cream industry as a whole sell more ice cream? Do you, as an ice cream retailer, need to stock a million flavors? Can you build a better business with more choices?

I don’t know. Maybe. 

I do know, however, that the number of choices, not just in ice cream but in all things, has increased exponentially over the last 50 years. That has split markets into ever-decreasing niches.

In a world of endless choices, find the one that you can most delight your people with, and focus there.

When you’re stuck, frustrated, or feeling like you might not be able to, start asking more questions. Specifically the why questions.

Why are you working on this project?
Why are you trying to start a company?
Why are you spending time on this task?
Why are you designing it for that platform?
Why would someone care?
Why do you care?

At the end of the day, it’s the why that matters. 

“Hey, Bob! Great to see you. How’ve you been? Working hard or hardly working?”

Sometimes, we use time to determine the answer.

“Boss said we could have as much overtime as we want. I’ve been pulling double-shifts.”
“We gotta ship next week. I’ve been sleeping at the office twice a week.”

Sometimes, we use physical effort.

“It’s mulch season. By the end of the day, my crew is a dishrag.”
“That fire last night was the most intense I’ve been on. The EMTs had to give me oxygen at one point.”

Sometimes, we use the complexity.

“I’ve been working on this algorithm for days and I still don’t have it yet.”
“I have a patient with something I’ve never seen before. I’ve been talking with experts across the globe to figure out the best treatment.”

Sometimes, we use the level of responsibility.

“We’re shipping next week, and it’s my butt on the line if something doesn’t work.”
“I’ve got three people on my team who are not pulling their weight. I’m gonna lose the rest of the team unless I fix the problem.”

Sometimes, we use the emotional danger.

“I’ve gotta stand in front and defend our position.”
“I’ve written the piece, but it’s so personal that I’m afraid to publish it.”

No matter what kind of work you do, you want to do the hard part. The hard part is what makes a difference. The hard part is how you separate yourself. How you stand out.

AI could never do the hard part. 

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

– Maybe Mark Twain, but maybe nobody

I stare at my ToDo list for the day, and I can feel myself gravitating towards certain tasks.

I can roughly categorize my tasks on the list as follows:

• Sales and networking
• Management
• Technical

Myself really wants myself to do the technical ones. Those are the ones I like. Write some Python to help so-and-so? Sure! Love to. Look at last night’s automated test suite and figure out what hapened? Absolutely! Dig into our architecture to see how we should make it better? I’m already doing it. 

I can often psyche myself up for the management tasks also because I’m usually good at them, even the tricky ones. I don’t mind doing the stuff I’m good at.

But then there’s the sales and marketing tasks. Ugh.

We’re starting a new company. Going out on our own. We need to find customers. I, as the leader of the band, need to find the customers. I suck at it. At least right now.

Guess which tasks are the most important? In fact, nothing else is actually important right now.

The days you start by eating the frog are the days you’re making progress.

Nothing else matters.

If you ask most people, they’d be happy to drive an EV. 

Probably even some of the people who think and say out loud how EVs are part of the grand master plan of authoritarian control. You know, mass surveillance and whatnot. I live amongst many of those people. 

Even these people would drive an EV?

Yes, many of them. Because at the end of the day, most people choose their cars for practical reasons. A person’s personal car choice is not the religious issue that the politicians and wealthy people say it is. It’s a practical choice. 

“This is one that I like and can afford.”
“I like to buy used cars. They provide better value.”
“I understand this one here.”

Even choosing a car-lifestyle or a non-car-lifestyle isn’t the religious issue those same people say it is. It’s, yet again, a practical decision for most. 

Sure, you’ll find scads in the trendy areas of NYC that don’t have cars due to the religion of evil-cars. And you’ll find scads in the semi-rural regions of Pennsylvania that would never consent to public transportation due to the religion of do-what-I-want-when-I-want. 

But for most, if you live in NYC, having a car is really difficult unless you also have a bank account with lots of commas. If you live in semi-rural Pennsylvania, not having a car is really difficult. We don’t have public transportation, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, or the old-fashioned local pizza delivery guy on my road. You want it? You gotta go get it yourself.

Here’s my view: EVs will overtake fossil fuel vehicles when it becomes more practical for the masses to have an EV.

Like with any other product development, watch what people do and ignore what they say. So, if you’re an engineer or in the EV business in any way, focus on that. Let’s make EVs more practical than fossil fuel cars. Cost, charging, reliability, safety, and yes, even the messaging. 

Most people don’t care whether their car is electric or not. 

When the Bobs come asking, you better have an answer.

Is it your title? “I’m the CEO. I do the CEO things.”

Is it your project responsibilities? “I’m the lead software engineer for the automated test framework. I define, develop, and fix it.”

Or is it more informal and harder to define?

Every good engineering team has at least one person whose role is hard to define. At least in the traditional sense of “here’s my title, and here’s my job description.” They step up to whatever is needed at the time, even if what is needed is below them, not familiar, or someone else’s job. They’re standing next to you in the lab, the conference room, and the mud.

Every great engineering team has this quality running through all the members.

When you start something new you’re going to need defined roles. A contract amongst yourselves so that everyone knows who’s responsible for what. You’ll need to satisfy the Bobs.

But also, everyone’s gonna need the mentality of “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

You can plan. You can measure twice and cut once. You can think ahead.

But at the end of the day, sometimes the universe pulls its goalie in the middle of the period. 

Now what? Now, you dig in and find solutions. You improvise. You could never have foreseen the current situation, so don’t get hung up. Use a different part, move that functionality into a different module, change the API, find a different supplier, bend it and hit it with a hammer. 

My favorite scene from the movie Apollo 13 takes place a short time after the famous, “Houston, we have a problem.” A group of engineers stands around a table staring at a mish-mash of pieces and parts available to the spacecraft crew. Their mission is to turn that pile of stuff into an air filter because C02 buildup is slowly asphyxiating the crew (here’s a great article on what they did).

Here’s what you got. Do it, or people die. 

There is no higher compliment that can be paid to a boots-on-the-ground engineer than “Wow, that’s clever.” Clever solutions happen at the intersection of creativity and knowledge. Now, put that engineer on stage with a crowd of people asking him to create a clever solution on the spot. That’s improvisation.

Don’t be afraid to go off-script. 

Engineers are like all non-engineers — nobody wants to fail.

Nobody wants their design to fail. Nobody wants their decision to be the cause. Nobody wants to be seen as bad at their job. But really, nobody wants to be blamed. 

Measure twice. Cut once.

But failure doesn’t necessarily mean somebody was reckless. It doesn’t necessarily mean someone is bad at their job. 

When I was teaching my kids to drive, I took each to a snowy, icy parking lot. 

“Hit the gas. Feel the wheels spin. Now hit the brakes. Feel the car slide. Try to turn. Feel the car keep going straight.”

The first thing I do whenever I pull out of my driveway onto the snowy, icy road is get some speed and hit the brakes. How slippery is this road? I recommend you do the same thing.

Failure is a data point. Failure helps you find the limits. Failure helps you experience what happens when you cross the line.

Here we are on the arc of our product development, and this happened. That was unexpected. Or, maybe, OK, great! We found the limit. Interesting. What can we learn? Why? What do we need to change? What do we need to make better? What if…?

SpaceX has blown up a lot of rockets — nine of them. Rapid unscheduled disassemblies. Theory is one thing. The real world is another.

The faster you break it, the faster you can fix it.

Engineers are famous for proclamations such as “You can’t make a baby in one month with nine women.”

Reality, and such. There are laws of physics and biology, after all.

But also, physics doesn’t control how much effort you put in or the project management decisions you make to go as fast as possible. Each individual must do it today, not tomorrow. Look at priorities all the time. Reprioritize when necessary. Keep the thing, the thing. Yes, you can find time today to meet about it. If that piece will be delayed, reimagine it, find a new solution. Always find new solutions. There is no work-life balance. There is only work-life integration. You can sleep when you’re dead. Magic doesn’t happen on 40-hour workweeks. 

The bear is right behind you. The other startup wants it more. Faster wins every time. 

As engineers, we have a love-hate relationship with cost.

On the one hand, we like to start with a clean sheet of paper and dream. What if cost didn’t matter at all? What could we build? But also, cost is one of those existential variables that helps bound the problem. 

Sometimes, boundaries are just limitations that must be engineered around — The river flow has this range of characteristics.

But many times, the boundaries on the problem are what push creativity and technology in a direction that leads to a better overall solution. Even better than without boundaries — Screen real estate limitations lead to better user interfaces. 

Cost can be either. Sometimes, we know the budget, and then that budget is just a limitation to engineer around. Engineering effort stops when we meet the budget. Sometimes, however, the cost becomes the main thing. Minimization without expense to function, performance, and perception is worth the effort.

When designing, we often trade cost for time, responsibility, and perception, if even subconsciously. We look around at what already exists and start there.

However, what if we throw those assumptions out the window and return to the first principles of what we’re trying to make and for whom? 

We can use this service to get us started quicker. OK, but could we do it better ourselves?

If we use this provider for this part, they will take responsibility if it breaks. OK, but do we care? 

We want to put “ISO certified” on our website. Do we? Does it actually matter?

Questioning every cost can be exhausting, but it can also be liberating. 

When Elon started SpaceX, he looked around at the history, players, and current state of rocket-making and believed it could be done better, faster, cheaper. 

He came up with a set of rules that engineers would live by in SpaceX:

1. Question every cost.
2. Have a maniacal sense of urgency.
3. Learn by failing.
4. Improvise.

Who the heck was he?

At the time, it seemed arrogant. Maybe even reckless. Sure, NASA, the US military, Lockheed, Boeing, and the throngs of subcontractors were living off an unending faucet of government financing with little incentive to improve, but also, they’d been there and done that. They’d lived through the public successes and failures. They knew what they were talking about. 

It takes as long as it takes and costs what it costs. Measure twice, cut once. Safety (including reputation safety) is paramount. Failure is not an option. Slow and steady. 

I’ve been in this position — the underling, the newbie, the one without any experience in the field. Who am I to question the wisdom and the knowledge of those who came before?

But just because this is the way its done, and we have very good reasons for doing it this way, doesn’t mean we should keep doing it this way.

That’s true in engineering, and its true in your life. 

Name it. 

Your project.
Your book.
Your song.
Your app. 
Your company.

You can change it later, but name it today.

Once it has a name, it exists. 

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

It doesn’t have to be special.

It doesn’t have to be good enough for someone else.

It doesn’t have to be your best, but it better be your best effort at the moment.

But it has to be done. 

It’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.

No matter how much you’ve pre-planned, followed procedures, controlled what you can control, kept up with maintenance, and ensured you’ve thought of everything, at some point, it will melt down. The tank will let loose, or the pipe will burst and fill your basement with excrement. Oh, and it will be 2 am on a Saturday morning.

How will you handle it as the leader?

Step one is to put on your boots, assemble the team, and prioritize. The team will want to spin because we’re humans. Spinning is what we do. You’re job is to focus the spin. Invite all of the relevant fixers into the room and discuss it. Argue it out. 

What’s our first step? Who’s gonna do what right now? 

Not what’s our long-term approach. Not who or what’s to blame, unless that blame directly leads to the solution (ie, “the pipe burst, let’s patch the pipe”). 

What are we going to do in the next hour? 

Determine who should work together and who needs to be left alone to focus. Nobody leaves the room until each of us knows exactly what we’re supposed to be doing when we walk out of it. 

Pure tactics. There will be a time and place for strategy, lessons learned, and blame. But it’s not right now.

Then dive down into the muck. Keep the real-time communication flowing. Adjust the path and directions based on that communication and what you learn. Head off the spin.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. 

No, we don’t think it is. We can probably say we know that it isn’t. 

But it’s OK — actually scientifically appropriate — to occasionally look out the window and say, “Are we sure the earth isn’t flat? Because it really looks flat.” And then go through the exercise of convincing ourselves that it is indeed still round. 

Occasionally, if infrequently, you should go back and convince yourself that you know what you think you know. The key is understanding when it makes sense to do it. If you do it too often, you spend too much of your time re-establishing all you know to be true at the expense of moving forward. Can you imagine having to wake up each morning and going through all of the data associated with the roundness or flatness of the earth?

Two inflection points that could cause the re-evaluation:

1. Time — we look at it all again every so often just to make sure we really know what we know. Do new tools capabilities exist? Has more or more relevant data been gathered? Once a year. Once a quarter. What’s the time frame that makes sense for your industry?
2. Event — did something just happen that should cause us to re-evaluate what we think we know?

Don’t be afraid of the “Is the earth flat?” questions. Everything we know today says for sure it’s round, but scientific rigor requires that sometimes you should reconvince yourself. 

Willingness is a measure of risk tolerance.

Are you willing to risk money?
Are you willing to risk love?
Are you willing to risk your reputation?
Are you willing to risk comfort?
Are you willing to risk friends?
Are you willing to risk your future?

Most of the time we don’t think much about willingness because the stakes are low. A little money, adjacent friends, an unknown future. 

But every once in a while, we are confronted with an inflection point. Here it is right out on the table. Big risk and maybe big reward or big downside.

Are you willing?

This place has a high cost of living. That place has a low cost of living. Will you get a cost of living raise?

We talk about the cost of living in terms of financials: rent and real estate, milk and eggs, taxes and healthcare, energy and transportation. 

But is the true cost of living some financial measure?

Cost is trade of payment. What are you willing to pay to live the life you want? 

My guess is that it has little to do with money.

Most of us in the western world spend most of our time dancing around the top of Maslow’s Pyramid. 

Let’s face it: a blog like this never exists unless I have the privilege of spending a good chunk of my time bouncing between the top tiers in that pyramid. And that’s definitely privilege. In fact, in the whirling dervish of today’s culture wars, where the term “privilege” has become a slur and call to punitive action, this is one variable on which you can check yourself. 

But sometimes you’ve fallen, or been pushed, down to the bottom of the pyramid. You’re in danger. Actual danger. 

When that happens, all of the highfalutin, I-wonder-what-my-life-means, deep thinking goes right out the window. It gets replaced by, “I gotta get shit done. Now.”

There are no philosophical musings. There is no deep thinking outside of the problem at hand. There is only, “How do I fix this?”

When you find yourself scrapping for the morsels on the floor, take a quick look around and see who’s under the table with you. Who else is bleary-eyed? Who else shared their just-recovered random chocolate chip with you? 

These are your people. These are the one’s you go to war with. These are the ones with whom you share the reward when you get back to the top of the pyramid.

Don’t let them go.

Ask an engineer from the tech industry (software or hardware) what the best moment in their career was, and likely the story will sound like this:

We got the prototypes back from the manufacturer the day after Christmas around lunchtime. We had to ship it on the 2nd. Three of us immediately grabbed the unit and headed into the lab. 

Nothing worked. We were screwed. When we first powered it up, one of the power caps blew right off the board. So we looked at the schematics, found the problem (reversed power and ground on that cap), and fired up the soldering iron to fix a few of the boards. Crisis averted.

Then, we couldn’t get the software loaded. Totally dead. But we dug in.  

At dinner time, we hit a local pizza joint. Over slices we argued, called each other unprintable names, created new ideas, abandoned others, and the juices flowed. By midnight of that first day, we had made some progress. We were confident that we had found and fixed all of the hardware issues and had made enough progress on the software that we were encouraged. It still wasn’t working, not by any stretch, but progress was made. 

And that continued day after day. Eight in the morning till after midnight. The week between Christmas and New Years. We shipped those prototypes on time and they worked. 

It was awesome. Three of us committed. Three of us feeding off each other’s energy. Three people acting as a single mind-melded entity. Three better than one.

Collaborative energy is real. When you capture it, don’t let it go. 

“Yo, wait! How did you do that? What was that command?”

It was sometime in the early-90’s at Lockheed. I was looking over my colleague Jim’s shoulder as he whirled his way around the command line on his Sun Workstation. He was showing me how to run nuclear survivability simulations on the spacecraft.

Then he did something — used some esoteric UNIX command — that dumped a sorted version of the file to the screen. It was exactly what we needed to see in the format we needed to see it.

 I stopped him, and asked him what the hell that command was because I needed to know that one.

“Oh, it was this…”

And he brought it back up on the command line. Then he said,

“You need to add this to your Book of Magic Commands.”

I just blinked at him.

“Uh, what?”

He reached down, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a composition notebook. On the front was a piece of tape with the words “Magic Commands” written in Sharpie.

“Yeah, every time I come across an important command that does something I need, or something I don’t understand, but works, I write it down in this notebook. My Book of Magic Commands. If I ever lose this, I’m done for.”

And I started my Book of Magic Commands that very day. It wasn’t actually a notebook but a file folder full of papers on which I wrote down the esoteric incantations of the world in which I have spent the rest of my career. In that early era of the computer age, this knowledge was power. Those that knew the magic commands held a special pedestal in the hierarchy of organizational usefulness. The knowledge was centralized. 

With the internet and ChatGPT, we software developers and computer power users no longer need to keep a notebook or file folder full of hand-written “magic commands.” The knowledge has been distributed. Anybody can ask for it and receive it. That’s generally a good thing, but there’s some nostalgia wrapped up in the pages of the “Magic Commands” notebooks tucked away in thousands of aging software developers desk drawers. I wonder what we’d learn about the authors if we collated all of that particular knowledge. Certainly something more than “here is the list of commands I used but didn’t really understand.”

I was looking through my filing cabinet for some old tax stuff and I ran across mine today. Here is that very first paper that started my Book of Magic Commands.

I’m not a master marketer.

I make the things. But what I know about marketing is that the magic comes down to: 

Is your idea worth sharing?

You can develop the perfect strategy. You can build out an amazing library of content. You can hire influencers and celebrities. You can show up to the right events and gain the spotlight.

Marketing can make all the difference. Some great ideas have never seen the light of the day because they were hindered by poor or no marketing. Marketing tells the story around your thing, and stories create the arcs of how we move through this life.

But, at the end of the day, if what you’ve created isn’t worth sharing, then it won’t last very long. The best marketing taps into the network effect. 

For many people — people like me — sharing an idea with your network encounters great friction. For reasons I don’t even understand myself, I sometimes hesitate to share. What if they don’t like what I like? What if they have a different experience? What if the things that matter to me don’t matter to them? Maybe I’m worried about my integrity. Or maybe it’s simpler than that and I’m just worried about what somebody else thinks of me.

Regardless, if you find me sharing your idea with my people, you’ve mastered the art. 

Go create something worth sharing.  

“It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.”

– Steven Pressfield, The War pf Art

Observing versus participating.

There is little risk in observing. 

You can make a difference by observing, but only if, by observing, you’ve engaged others in the process through your observations. You’ve helped somebody see a new perspective, feel something they hadn’t previously, or find a new creative arc. You’ve moved the state of the art forward through engaged observation.

All the risk is in participating. 

If you’re in the ring, you’re participating. And if you’re participating, you incur risk. We reward risk. I don’t know if that’s a feature or a bug of the world we live in. I just know it’s true.

Also, if you’re in the arena, you’ll get my respect. I may not agree with you, and I may think you’re doing it all wrong, but I’ll certainly respect that you’re out there making a go of it. We’ll argue till we come to some mutual understanding, even if that understanding is “yeah, we’re not gonna come together on this.”

If you’re on my team, you’re in the arena, and I’m there too. I’m willing to get stomped by the bull. Are you?

Nobody is self-made.

If someone says it, that’s arrogance or ignorance talking.

What about your customers, readers, or users? Your legal and accounting partners? The people who wrote the stuff you read? The kid in his basement who wrote the app you’re using? The financial system? The internet? The government? Your employees? Your partner and family? That one teacher in 6th grade?

Each of us is one part of a whole, and that whole is what made you. Not you.

The first step in contributing something meaningful to this world we live in is to acknowledge those who’ve made you who you are.

I’ve been trying to get to this post for the last hour and a half.

I’m not procrastinating, but every time I say to myself, “OK, now let’s start writing,” I’m pulled back to the other thing I’m actually working on. The thing my brain just can’t stop thinking about.

I’m teaming with ideas that I just gotta get out of my head. “Oh, and this.” “Don’t forget that.” “Yes! Move this here.”

I’m in (or was in) the flow state. The flow state is a gift, but it can be fickle. When it grabs you, hold on and don’t let go until it runs its course. It might last an hour or maybe all day. Maybe you’ll miss lunch or dinner. No matter.

Go with the flow.

When I pick up a hammer, there is no doubt about what I use it for.

I hit and extract things with it. Sometimes those things are nails, sometimes not. But I never look at it and think, “maybe this hammer would be good at designing my deck” or “I wonder if I could drill a precise 1/8″ hole with this thing?” I don’t ask it to do those things. It never crosses my mind that it might be able to. 

I have no expectations for the hammer beyond hitting and extracting. 

Just like a hammer, ChatGPT (and Claude, etc) is a tool. A tool that requires a person.

But when we look at ChatGPT, we’re not exactly sure what we can use it for. Can it write my essay? Can it create my company logo? Can it do my math homework? Can it write my code? Can it design my code? Can I just “plug AI into that” and have it solve my problem? Can it just do everything while I sit around watching Squid Game?

ChatGPT looks super smart. It looks like it knows everything. It looks like it solves many of our problems. But looks are deceiving. 

Here’s some advice: lower your expectations. 

An actual paraphrased conversation I recently had with ChatGPT:

Me: Create an icon set to be used in a presentation that represents software build, package, release, and deliver. 
ChatGPT: [gives me something, but with a misspelled word]

Me: Try again, but simpler, use only a single color and spell software correctly.
ChatGPT: [gives me something I like, but software still misspelled]

Me: OK, give me these exact images again, but spell “software” correctly in image 3.
ChatGPT: [totally changes everything and software still misspelled]

Me: No, don’t change the images. Go back to the previous, but just correct the spelling of “software”
ChatGPT: [again, totally new images that I don’t like and software still misspelled]

Me: no, dumbass. do what I’ve already told you to do.
ChatGPT: [4 new images, software still misspelled]

Me: [Back to google image searching…]

ChatGPT is that kid in school that talks a good game, but you know that under the covers, doesn’t know shit about shit. Because it doesn’t know anything. It’s statistics, pure and simple. Statistics, even predictive statistics, is an analysis of history, not knowledge.

AI is sneaky stupid. Lower your expectations.

What role do consequences serve? Do they serve any?

What if the implementation of the playground eliminates any consequence of falling?
What if the implementation of the economic system eliminates any consequence of repression?
What if the implementation of the financial system eliminates any consequence of doing stupid things?
What if the implementation of the legal system eliminates any consequence of the transgression of the law?
What if the implementation of the social system eliminates any consequence of poor choices?
What if the implementation of the social system eliminates any consequence of inequality?

The balance between what should and shouldn’t have consequences and what those consequences should be is where the rubber meets the road. 

It matters quite a lot who’s in the room.

How you speak. How you see yourself. What your role is. What the others’ roles are. What do they care about. What terminology you use. Which story you tell.

If you’re talking to the engineering team, tell them how the stuff they’re making matters to the company and the customers.
If you’re talking to the financial team, tell them how the money they’re saving matters to the company and the investors.
If you’re talking to the marketing and sales team, tell them how gaining customers matters to the company and their own bank accounts.
If you’re talking to the admin team, tell them how their day-to-day effort matters to the workers and the leadership.
If you’re talking to the investors, tell them how their investment matters to the world and the inevitable success that follows.

All the same message wrapped up in a myriad of stories.

Always know who’s in the room.

Do they becken you or do they torture you?

It might be a physical piece of paper or the just-opened “Document1” file in Word. Maybe it’s the “untitled” project in GarageBand or the squarish vehicle that’s been sitting under a tarp in your backyard for 20 years. It could be the empty space or the old, worn-out couch in the corner of your basement. It may be the “Live Video” button on the “Create post” screen. It might be the scraggy patch of grass and weeds between the patio and the garage.

Whatever your blank page and whether it’s beckoning or torturing you, it’s time to start. Add one line, or one beat. Remove the cover. Charge up the drill and uncover the saw. Grab your shovel and tiller.

We don’t leave blank pages around for nothing.

Principles.

Everyone says they have them. Some like to shout about why theirs are the right ones, while others argue with only themselves.

But watch what they do.

I’ve spent a career making things for other people to use. The biggest takeaway I have is that people generally do the easy thing. Because we can’t always do the hard thing. Sometimes we need to just do the easy thing. Even if it goes against our principles.

So, if you’re a maker, a builder, or a creator of useful things, make the right thing to do the easy thing to do.

Adding manpower to a late (software) project makes it later.

As people get promoted into increasingly higher positions within an organization, they start to lose their minds. Like they’ve never been the person in the trenches and have never experienced or understood the issues at that ground level. For example, throwing more people at the problem.

If two are good, eight are better. The Costco principle. 

But if you’re doing the work, you know two things:

1. If you’re already late, adding more responsibilities to your plate, such as bringing people up to speed, communicating with more people, and herding more cats, slows you down. 
2. You can’t make a baby in one month with nine women. Some things take the time they take based on physics, biology, God, or whatever. 

Every team project has an academically correct amount of people performing the correct roles and tasks. Each person working at capacity and contributing exactly what is needed from them. 

No team project in history has ever experienced this.

However, good leadership can approach it. Good leaders can assess the state of the crew, fix priorities, and help grease the skids. Good leaders are in tune with the work to be done and the team itself. Then, they can figure out if and where to add manpower.

Thwarting Brooke’s Law takes awareness, communication between leadership and the team, and the willingness to admit that maybe it’s gonna take what it’s gonna take. 

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

“Murphy’s Law” originated in the late 1940s at Edwards Air Force Base. Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was an engineer working on an experiment designed to determine how much sudden deceleration a person could withstand in a crash. Murphy had a problem. Specifically, he had a team competence problem. A technician had wired the experiment incorrectly, consequently leading to a failure to obtain the crucial data during the test. Exasperated, he exclaimed something close to the law we now know and use frequently.

Then it got legs because it resonates with all of us. You already know this one. You’ve seen it in your life and probably cited it, usually in a moment of frustration or a pessimistic prediction of the future.

However, what if, at its core, it’s really a call to optimism?

Murphy’s Law encourages us to plan ahead, be resilient and flexible, understand risks, and innovate on solutions. It serves as a reminder not just of the inevitability of problems, but of our capacity to anticipate, adapt to, and overcome them.

Murphy’s Law is your friend.

The cognitive limit to the number of stable social relationships that one can maintain is around 150. 

Kevin Kelly wrote a famous blog post about “1000 True Fans.” If you’re someone who makes things, or making things happen, you should read this.

He argues that if you can cultivate 1000 true fans of whatever it is you’re making or doing, you have a sustainable business. You can bypass the traditional channels that require someone or some group to select you for success, such as record labels, book publishers, media publishers, HR departments in corporations, etc. 

But what about the subgroup of 150 people inside that group of 1000 true fans? Your inner circle. 

What if every day you woke up and nurtured a true and meaningful relationship with one or a few of those 150 people. Not 150 every day. Just a few. Over the course of the year, you’ve touched them all. 

Now, what if each person on this planet did the same.

What kind of a world would we live in if each and every one of us cared about, nurtured, and built a relationship with our 150?

The attempted solution to a problem makes the problem worse through unintended consequences. 

Economic theory states that you usually get what you incentivize properly. This one is closely related to Goodhart’s Law. 

Colonial India had a live cobra problem. So, the government offered a reward for every dead cobra. This worked. Eventually, there are very few live cobras. 

But now, the people making money from the incentive had a dead cobra problem. So, the people started breeding cobras just to kill them. This worked.

But then the government caught wind of the scam and eliminated the reward. So, the breeders just released all the captive snakes back into the wild.

And once again, colonial India had a live cobra problem.

Removing older, more polluting vehicles from the road can increase overall emissions due to the environmental cost of manufacturing new vehicles.

Using antibiotics to promote livestock growth can lead to the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Pay-as-you-throw schemes to encourage recycling and reduce waste can increase illegal dumping.

Traffic congestion taxes to reduce center city traffic can lead to grid-lock in neighborhoods just outside the fee zone.

Solutions to multi-variable and complex problems require rigorous analysis, experimentation, and assessment of consequences and reactions to incentive schemes. Reassessment of data. Adjustments over time. Willingness to change directions. Admission of false starts. Unbiased rethinking. Empathy and kindness. Forgiveness. 

What doesn’t work is soundbite-worthy, toggle-switch, single-variable, fist-pumping slogans. 

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

One of my friends and I have a funny little tension around the scheduling of software development work. We call it the 3X fudge factor. I look at the work he’s to do and I come up with my estimate of how long it should take him. I tell him, and then he immediately multiplies by three. If I say it should take a week, he says it’ll be three weeks.

It works in reverse also. If he gives me an estimate of three days, I immediately translate that as one day.

Who’s right? Well, we both are. Kind of.

I’m right if he’s totally focused, nobody gets in his way, and nothing goes wrong—the best-case scenario. But when does that happen? Never. So, his 3X estimate usually turns out to be closer to right and sometimes even aggressive, as the second clause of Hofstadter’s Law kicks in.

But you gotta know the best-case scenario to know how much Hofstadter’s Law will effect the final outcome. The longer the best-case, the more effect. Plus, if we need him to get it done ASAP, I can use my position to create the best possible environment by reassigning responsibilities, swatting flies, and giving him every possibility to remain focused.

One of the key leadership attributes is knowing how and when to apply Hofstadter’s Law.

Adding extra capacity sometimes leads to worse overall performance.

“More is better.”
“If I just had more money.”
“That’s easy for you, you have more money/time/land/etc.”

We often conflate abundance with advantage. It can be. But it isn’t automatically.

a) Don’t let them tell you why you can’t, what you can’t, or how amazing you can’t be with what you have.
b) Don’t tell yourself why you can’t, what you can’t, or how amazing you can’t be with what you have.

Last weekend, I drove to NYC to deposit my oldest son and his girlfriend back in Brooklyn after they had spent a nice weekend with us. Up and back through three of the five boroughs: Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Manhattan. I’ve driven through NYC dozens, maybe 100’s of times, and even before they lived there, I was already a hardened veteran of NYC driving. As soon as I cross the Goethals Bridge or emerge from the Holland Tunnel into the canyons of lower Manhattan, I’m in NYC driver mode. Like flicking a switch.

I’m a freakin pro. And truth be told, I love it.

U-turn in the middle of the street? Yup. Turn left from the right lane? Of course. Just stop in the middle and double park? You betcha.

I’ve not (yet) had an accident, and I know why. Because when I’m driving around there, I expect any and all things all the time. Just as I don’t think twice about disregarding all traffic decorum, I expect all of those around me to do the same.

Of course you can cut me off. Oh, you want to stick your bumper into the 8-inch space separating me and the guy in front of me? Sure, go ahead. Going around me on the sidewalk to the right? Be my guest.

It’s all good because none of it is astonishing to me in this context. I expect it, I’m ready for it, I adjust, and it’s no big deal. And yeah, I do it also.

But what happens on the roads in the small rural community in eastern Pennsylvania in which I live? Nothing like that. It’s all slower, orderly, and calm. I don’t expect any of that.

But then someone gets cut off, and what happens? Boom. Accident. Or, at the very least, “You idiot! Where’d you learn to drive!” It might bother me for the rest of the day.

This is the Principle of Least Astonishment — minimizing confusion and unexpected behaviors while maximizing intuitive understanding.

We in the software development world use the Priniciple of Least Astonishment (also called the Law of Least Surprise) all the time.

If we’re doing our job and using this principle, you (the user) can figure out how to do things on your phone or computer that nobody has taught you explicitly. For example, nobody taught you how to find the settings on your phone. You know they’re in the “Settings” app. We use this principle under the covers as well, even in the nitty-gritty interworkings of the technology. We argue vehemently about how this API should work or what should data it requires.

Least astonishment changes with the intuition of the culture and its people. Which means it changes over time and with context. If you handed an iPhone to George Washington, he wouldn’t be able to find the settings, nor even understand how to turn it on because he doesn’t have any context or intuitive build-up for the technology.

He would be very astonished.

Next time you’re organizing your closet, developing a set of guidelines for your Church committee, or driving around your town, make sure you’re applying the Principle of Least Astonishment. It will serve you well.

Work expands to fill the time available for completion.

I hate meetings at work. And you do, too. I know you do. 

Long ago, bleary-eyed in the middle of the night, I learned a couple of valuable lessons about meetings. The first is we have way too many. Therefore, the first step in taking back ownership of your time is to decline useless meetings. But the second was just as important — meetings will last as long as the calendar says they will.

If you invite people to a one-hour meeting, someone, or sometimes several someones, will yammer on for 60 minutes until the bell dings. Then, the herd will just move on to the next meeting, where someone else will yammer on for the full 60 minutes.

It’s stupid. It’s a productivity killer (personally and organizationally). It sucks your energy and willingness to live. 

But it’s also not really someone’s fault. It’s just a trait of human beings. It’s kinda just in us. Hence, the naming of the phenomena. 

So how do you combat it? By also applying a little human psychology of your own.

1. Change your default meeting time to 15 minutes. Only selectively and intentionally schedule a discussion for longer than 15 minutes. 
2. Why have a meeting if you can work it out with a few exchanges on Slack? Do it.
3. Announce that you have hard stop at 15/30/60 minutes. Then leave/drop at that time. 

You can do this. Break the grip of Parkinson’s Law. 

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

“Is this going to be on the test?”
“What code do I use to ensure this is covered by insurance?”
“How do you rank me against my peers?”

We game the system. It’s what we do.

Great leaders look outside the system, procedures, and policies to recognize great performance and impact.

Two-way door decisions are the kind where you can always change your mind, back up, and make the other decision. Ordering a burger is a two-way door decision.

One-way door decisions are the kind where you can’t go back once you make it. Jumping out of the airplane is a one-way door decision.

Two-way door decisions allow testing, trying new things, and changing one’s mind. One-way door decisions require commitment, careful consideration, and learning as much as possible before making it.

Often, we trick ourselves into thinking that two-way door decisions are actually one-way door decisions. That’s not surprising because restricting the number of variables is a hack we use to solve problems. If we tell ourselves, “OK, I have to commit,” and believe it, we’re more likely to make that outcome successful. Let’s not consider the other side.

But most decisions we make are two-way door decisions. There’s usually a path to back out, chang your mind, and do the other thing.

Sometimes you gotta bite the bullet and start again. That’s just being a human.

Customer: Can you help me with this problem?
Clerk: Not my job.

Manager: Will you help Jane figure this out?
Employee: Not my job.

Test Engineer: Can you help me understand how this works?
Software Engineer: Not my job.

“Not my job” may seem like the opposite, or at least orthogonal to “just doing my job.” But at their core, they’re both about responsibility — specifically, a deflection of responsibility (if even in a faux manner).

Not my job is an attitude.

I’ve banned the phrase “not my job” from my teams. That doesn’t mean that we always take on everything, no matter the request. It just means we don’t have the “not my job” attitude. If the request or task isn’t something we can or should handle, then we set the requestor on the right path as best we can.

We help. We don’t deflect responsibility.

Is it your job?

Reporter: What were you thinking when you ran into the burning building to save that child?
Firefighter: Just doing my job.

Tenant: How could you evict us?
Sheriff: Just doing my job.

Parent: Why did you help our son and tutor him after school and on weekends?
Teacher: Just doing my job.

Regulator: How could you continue after knowing your company was dumping illegally?
Employee: Just doing my job.

Just doing my job is a utility answer. It provides both a cover and a deflection for real or faux humbleness. Equal parts “not my responsibility” and “oh, thank you for noticing that I took responsibility.” 

Doing your job in either case is about responsibility. 

Your company and customers need someone who takes responsibility. Your team needs someone who takes responsibility. Your community, Church, and book group need someone who takes responsibility. This world need people who take responsibility. 

Are you just doing your job?

The music artists have stood up.

Much like the authors did over the summer, songwriters and musicians have penned an open letter to the tech industry — let’s pump the brakes on music generation with AI.

And like the authors, the musicians are afraid of two things:

1. Losing revenue
2. AI will generate music that sounds like them or is as good as or better than they are (which, for many, but not all, is just a form of the first thing)

“When used irresponsibly, AI poses enormous threats to our ability to protect our privacy, our identities, our music and our livelihoods. Some of the biggest and most powerful companies are, without permission, using our work to train AI models. … For many working musicians, artists and songwriters who are just trying to make ends meet, this would be catastrophic.”

“This assault on human creativity must be stopped. We must protect against the predatory use of AI to steal professional artists’ voices and likenesses, violate creators’ rights, and destroy the music ecosystem.”

As with the authors and anybody whose job sits in AI’s crosshairs, I agree with part of their argument. 

The copyright and “likeness” argument is very interesting. Let’s face it: Humans do this all the time, not just with the arts but also with science. We always use those who came before us as inspiration and sometimes quite directly to move the state of the art forward. Art and science are additive. 

Why is AI different than humans in this regard? Is it scale? Is it that AI has illegally ingested the content?

I’m interested to see how it turns out. I agree that protection for the creators must exist. Basically, I trust the legal process.

The fear of “AI might do our job better than us” is, in my opinion, a non-argument.

Drum machines and GarageBand didn’t put drummers out of business. Synthesizers haven’t put orchestras and horn sections out of business. Pre-recorded loops haven’t put touring musicians out of business.

AI is a brand new toolbox full of new toys. The true creators will find innovative and interesting ways to incorporate the new AI toolbox into their art. 

They always have. They always will. 

The fear-mongering says that AI will take your job.

Be afraid. It’s all bad. At best, our future is one where we all sit around with nothing to do because of AI. At worst, AI tries to kill us. 

In reality, AI, or at least its current and near-future state, has quite the opposite effect. Learning how to use it will make you more valuable to your company and customers. 

The current state of AI is what I call “personal automation.” 

It’s still you, but it’s you with a drill and circular saw. If you dig in, your productivity will go up. 

However, productivity isn’t the only value that AI increases. Because it’s also you with an editor, an Excel expert, a personal assistant, a graduate assistant, and an awkward teenager in his parent’s basement who’s learning to write Python code to scrape the contents of questionable websites. 

“Here is a list of highlights from last year. Create a message to send to our partners that summarizes it succinctly with an optimistic tone.”

“Create a formula that looks through my table of data and makes 3 categories: > 100, < 1, and everything else.”

“Look through this chain of emails, summarize it, and tell me if I’ve been asked to do anything, and if so, create a reply that indicates I’ll work on it next week.”

“Find the trends in this set of data.”

“Here is a Python script. Keeping this same style, add a new function that takes in a filename from the –ofile argument and directs all output to this file. The default is out.txt.”

It’s you, but more valuable. 

You have a plan. You have a map. But your destination is unknowable without hindsight.

You are disciplined. You are committed. But your journey is unknowable without hindsight.

You have an idea. You have a team. But what you sell is unknowable without hindsight.

Physics insists that the future is unknowable, and hindsight is 20/20.

Don’t fight physics.

Are you living a good story?

Living a good story conjures visions of adventure, travel, overcoming odds, meeting interesting people, purpose, falling down, and standing up for one’s beliefs in the face of an oppressing mob. The highlight reel plays like a movie trailer.

But does the trailer really tell the story?

Are you living a good story?

Of course, you are. It’s up to you to see it that way.

Each step, analysis, task, decision, operation, and assignment in this story already is or will be, theoretically possible with AI. If you broke down this story into each of its constituent parts — from entity formation and legal work, to business case analysis, marketing plans, and content creation, all the way through manufacturing and delivery — you can plausibly replace that part with AI. 

If you work in any of the areas mentioned, AI will affect you. But will you be replaced? Will you lose your job?

Autonomous automation is the dystopian nightmare of Vonnegut’s Player Piano. And you’re starting to see it in corporate road maps, venture capital pitch decks, TEDx talks, and fear-mongering journalism. 

But that’s all it is right now. It’s in the idea stage, and it’s being driven by the idea people, just like the internet was in the late 90s. It’s in the “we can apply AI to this task and get faster, cheaper, better” block diagram stage.

Some of it will happen. Some of it will start to happen in five to ten years. 

But just like with the internet, and electricity, and horseless carriages, humans and their creativity still matter. These technologies created entirely new business models and industries. 

Automation and AI will do the same. Yes, depending on your job — white-collar work is more at risk than blue-collar work — you may become a victim. 

But like most other victimhoods in this life, it’s a matter of perspective and what you do with it.

We’ve generated a set of technical drawings and specifications for your products, forwarded these to a manufacturer that meets specifications, and created the distribution pipeline. You were hoping for a same-day service from order through shipping, but the cost analysis, considering pricing and manufacturing, doesn’t support it. The manufacturer we’ve chosen to support the business case will manufacture-on-demand and has indicated that each product will require 14 hours to build. Therefore, we cannot guarantee same-day shipping for your customers, but we can guarantee next-day shipping. The manufacturer has locations in Brazil and Mexico, so 2nd-day arrival can be guaranteed for US customers but not European and Asian customers. We know this does not meet your original intentions, but given the business case, this is the best financial scenario for you.

This is where it gets really interesting.

This is supply chain management (SCM). You can get a college degree in it, just like many other fields that AI is coming for. SCM is critical to any physical product development business. Next to sales, the most important thing.

You may have yet to hear of SCM prior to Covid. It used to be a behind-the-scenes pillar of the operations department. Important but not really discussed outside of the walls of the office. But Covid shined the light on the supply chain — or lack thereof. In the post-Covid world, SCM has found its place in the sun. 

And someday, AI will both automate it and make the decisions. 

Connecting the pieces of the supply chain is pure automation, but making the decisions about this manufacturer versus that one and analyzing the delivery outcomes with regard to the business case is very interesting. Businesses pay consulting companies exorbitant fees to figure this stuff out for them.

When will AI take over?

Not very soon. Both automation and decision-making in the supply chain currently sit across a heterogeneous mix of world partners. Governments, language, geography — all deterrents in the supply chain. Even though AI might be smart enough in the near future to do it, the logistics will slow it down significantly.

But someday…

In addition to the website and social media content, we’ve generated a social media and web advertising strategy, and the first ads will start to run today at 6 pm. These ads draw the engagers to the top of the sales funnel that we’ve connected to your entire online presence. We’ve created a strategic communication campaign that resonates with your target audience and reuses much of the content they’ll see on your social media to ensure continuity and build the trust they require. In compliance with the marketing strategy and business objectives, we’ve set a pricing structure that requires two versions of your product with slightly different feature sets for each. This varies from your original idea of a single product but will result in a better overall product strategy and pave the way for follow-on products in the future. We’ve named your products the “BassBlaster Pro” and “BassBlaster+” and have adjusted your product definitions accordingly. 

This paragraph contains an interesting mix of AI automation in combination with decision-making. 

You’re already seeing AI advertising services and automated campaigns. Once the strategy is developed, using AI to automate the advertising and communications campaign itself is fairly straightforward.

But the humans are currently making the decisions and forming the strategies. In our scenario, the AI makes these decisions and forms the strategy. That’s coming in concert with the marketing strategy since they all work together.

The big leap here is that AI is performing the CEO and CCO’s (Chief Commercial Officer) role of devising the business strategy and then a product strategy to support the business. 

Although a leap for now, this is definitely coming as well. Maybe AI isn’t the CEO and CCO but more like a business consulting firm such as McKinsey, Bain, or BCG. In fact, our scenario highlights that AI might have a more meaningful impact on the business consulting world than the product development companies themselves. 

Business majors should be on notice. 

The domain “freakthefishout.com” has been purchased, and the website has been created along with a full set of social media accounts. We’ve generated a baseline of video and visual content with you as hero figure for each of those accounts. We highlight the excitement of the launch of your product and company but contrast it with the content that resonates with your audience, which tends towards introversion, outdoor pursuits, and a requirement of trustworthiness. We gathered enough video of you from our initial conversation to generate the first 30 days of content. We’ll ask for another conversation with you in two weeks so that we can generate the second 30 days’ worth of content. The social media campaign will continue for the next 60 days, as defined in your introductory AutoBizInABox plan, and can be extended indefinitely with follow-on plans. 

The domain, website, and social media account creation for a basic product business like this is, like the legal and financial pieces, straightforward and cookie-cutter. AI could even write the code and make the desirable customizations required for the marketing strategy it has devised. 

You’re now hearing about the wonderful world of AI-generated video content. Sora and deepfakes, etc. And maybe that scares the bejesus out of you.

You can relax. This part of the scenario is quite far off. 

Yes, to some extent, it’s here or very close, but fully automated, realistic content with you as the star, is much farther off. The deepfake stuff that you see today is a human-intense exercise. AI is just the skill that makes it possible. 

Sora is currently generating some interesting video, but its wholly fiction. It’s not accurately generating real people, places, and things. Certainly nothing like capturing someone’s likeness and using that to create. This is theoretically possible but maybe practically impossible for a long time.  

The more interesting use of AI here is to make decisions about the audience. Those decisions tie to an overall product and marketing strategy and guidance that AI formed itself. It’s not exactly an automation use case of AI, but it’s a decision-making use case that’s coming as well. 

“FreakTheFishOut, LLC has been created with you as the founder and sole operator. Your federal EIN number is 12-3456789, and business checking and credit accounts have been created and connected to a bookkeeping and tax service that falls within your business case’s projected financial picture. We’ve pushed a mobile application to your devices for all financial transactions. You’ll find a founder gift of $100 in your business checking account as a thank-you for using AutoBizInABox.” 

AI could rather simply handle this entity law, banking, and accounting, with an interface to the government. 

Low-cost, vanilla entity creation services already exist through sites like LegalZoom and SwyftFilings. A couple of questions and a few clicks later, you have an LLC or S-Corp. To get the EIN, you use the IRS website. It also doesn’t take long, but I suspect there might be a human at the backend of this process because you can only get service during normal business hours. 

Once you have the EIN, you can setup your financial system with checking, credit, and tax services. Services like Found already exist to combine banking with bookkeeping and basic tax filing. 

All of these services already exist, so one part of the automation with AI is just connecting it all together—a true automation task. However, the other, more important piece is when AI doesn’t just create the infrastructure you tell it to but it decides what it should be based on the conversation you had at the beginning. Automation with AI might currently be closest to handling these pieces, but it’s certainly not there yet. 

The legal and financial decision-making and tasks required for this basic type of business is cookie-cutter and broadly applicable across most businesses of this type. If you currently work in any of these areas, AI is coming, and may replace the people that do the specific tasks in the near future. However, the connective tissue required to string all of this together is further off. 

But the basic legal, banking, and accounting professions should be on notice. 

Imagine you have an idea for a business. Let’s say you’ve developed an innovative fishing rig, and now you want to share it with the world (and get paid). 

So you go to “autobizinabox.com,” and a chatbot conducts about an hour-long conversation with you, asking you a million questions. Less than an hour later, you get a notification that says.

Congratulations Mr. Fancy Pants! 

FreakTheFishOut, LLC has been created with you as the founder and sole operator. Your federal EIN number is 12-3456789, and business checking and credit accounts have been created and connected to a bookkeeping and tax service that falls within your business case’s projected financial picture. We’ve pushed a mobile application to your devices for all financial transactions. You’ll find a founder gift of $100 in your business checking account as a thank-you for using AutoBizInABox. 

The domain “freakthefishout.com” has been purchased, and the website has been created along with a full set of social media accounts. We’ve generated a baseline of video and visual content with you as the hero figure for each of those accounts. We highlight the excitement of the launch of your product and company but contrast it with the content that resonates with your audience, which tends towards introversion, outdoor pursuits, and a requirement of trustworthiness. We gathered enough video of you from our initial conversation to generate the first 30 days of content. We’ll ask for another conversation with you in two weeks so that we can generate the second 30 days’ worth of content. The social media campaign will continue for the next 60 days, as defined in your introductory AutoBizInABox plan, and can be extended indefinitely with follow-on plans. 

In addition to the website and social media content, we’ve generated a social media and web advertising strategy, and the first ads will start to run today at 6 pm. These ads draw the engagers to the top of the sales funnel that we’ve connected to your entire online presence. We’ve created a strategic communication campaign that resonates with your target audience and reuses much of the content they’ll see on your social media to ensure continuity and build the trust they require. In compliance with the marketing strategy and business objectives, we’ve set a pricing structure that requires two versions of your product with slightly different feature sets for each. This varies from your original idea of a single product but will result in a better overall product strategy and pave the way for follow-on products in the future. We’ve named your products the “BassBlaster Pro” and “BassBlaster+” and have adjusted your product definitions accordingly. 

We’ve generated a set of technical drawings and specifications for your products, forwarded these to a manufacturer that meets specifications, and created the distribution pipeline. You were hoping for a same-day service from order through shipping, but the cost analysis, considering pricing and manufacturing, doesn’t support it. The manufacturer we’ve chosen to support the business case will manufacture-on-demand and has indicated that each product will require 14 hours to build. Therefore, we cannot guarantee same-day shipping for your customers, but we can guarantee next-day shipping. The manufacturer has locations in Brazil and Mexico, so 2nd-day arrival can be guaranteed for US customers but not European and Asian customers. We know this does not meet your original intentions, but given the business case, this is the best financial scenario for you.

Congratulations again! We love helping human innovators such as yourself realize their dream of bringing human ideas to fruition. 

We suggest you hop onto freakthefishout.com and see all that you’ve brought forth into the world…

AI like ChatGPT is now creeping into the Organizational Augmentation world. 

Organizational augmentation is like outsourcing a skillset or having an excellent assistant. They’re not totally autonomous, but they do a lot by themselves without you needing to get involved. You set the rules and expectations, and they do the work. Plus, you’ve empowered them to make some decisions on your behalf, but staying with the guidelines you’ve set up. 

Organizations and teams start to feel some benefits here.

The Helpdesk is a great example. If you train an LLM on your stuff, it can effectively hold a conversation about it with humans. Even as that conversation twists and turns around an unknown number of curves. If the training data is sufficient, the chatbot can keep up.

The virtual graduate assistant is another example. You can offload a specific task, such as analyzing data to find trends, researching and summarizing prior art, or even interpreting legal briefs. 

But organizational augmentation comes with a required expertise and a financial cost. 

It requires programming your own application and incurs a dynamic cost across the interface to the LLM. To bring virtual bots into your workflow or team, you must use the LLM’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Which means, “you have to write your own code to create the bot.” And you have to pay for every piece of information you send and receive to the LLM. More data == more cost.

Organizational automation is where it starts. Maybe you need less helpdesk people. Maybe you need two grad assistants instead of three. Maybe you don’t need to hire out some specific task.

But at the end of the day, the effect is minimal.

Next, we’ll look at the holy grail — Autonomous Automation.

The first level of automation is Personal Automation.

Personal automation devices allow you to do your work faster, more accurately, and more effectively and do multiple things simultaneously. The electric drill and dishwasher are personal automation devices. Basically, they allow you to do something faster or more accurately and/or do something else while the machine performs the task.

Personal automation makes you more productive and generally happier. But you’re still intimately involved in the input and outcome. It’s like having to micromanage the shitty intern, but when properly directed, that intern is very helpful.

The drill hasn’t put any construction workers out of a job. No restaurant manager has fired the human who washes dishes because they bought a dishwasher machine. Both of these tools enhance those people’s contribution to the organization, but the organization isn’t materially benefitting beyond your uptick in productivity and happiness.

This is where AI, like ChatGPT, currently lives. You can offload tasks like editing your writing, creating ideas, summarizing TLDRs, creating code and script snippets, analyzing data, and generating images. It’s very helpful to you, the person, but you’re still required.

Like the electric drill, it’s not putting anybody out of work.

Next, we’ll look at the genre of automation that AI is starting to poke into — Partial Automation.

I see fear-mongering about AI all over the place. 

People worried about their jobs and their place in the world because of AI’s ability to automate. To be fair, some of this is warranted, i.e., AI automation will replace people in some roles. Including in my orbit directly. But let’s give it some context.

First, automating people out of jobs has been going on for 100’s of years through the introduction of machines into the workforce. Machines don’t get tired, have the strength of thousands of people, and can do the same thing repetitively with great precision. Nothing about the current wave of automation fear is novel or scarier than when machines joined the workforce. 

Second, as with the introduction of machines, certain activities and jobs are more exposed than others. The current fear-inducing AI, ChatGPT, and its competitors are a type of AI called “large language models.” 

“An LLM is akin to a vast library staffed by an incredibly fast and knowledgeable librarian. Just as this librarian can sift through thousands of books to provide information, summarize stories, or answer questions based on the content of those books, an LLM scans its extensive database of text from the internet to generate responses, make predictions, and understand context in a way that mimics human conversation and writing.”

The previous paragraph shows you what an LLM can do. ChatGPT wrote it. I asked it: “Describe what an LLM is in a couple sentences with an analogy.”

So, an LLM is good at certain types of writing. An LLM is also good at a few other things, such as generating images (and soon video) and writing code. 

So where does that leave you and me, and will AI automation put us out of a job?

As someone who works in both software development and automation (both squarely in the sights of AI), I have a unique perspective. I see three broad levels of automation:

• Personal automation
• Organizational augmentation
• Autonomous automation

Over the next several days we’ll take a look at these, what they mean, and how AI fits into each.

I think a lot about the importance of struggling and failing as the catalyst to move forward and succeed. It’s one of the essences of my self and team leadership.

I think about it mostly because I’ve seen and experienced a bunch of it anecdotally in my own life both personally and professionally. Anecdotal evidence is fraught, but in this case, many of the experts and much of the data agrees. 

But it’s not just that you fail. It’s how you fail and your attitude about it. Failure only does you good if you can learn to recognize the lessons within it. When learning how to fail, change the statements to questions:

“I’ll never do that again” => “What will I do differently next time?”
“I’m such an idiot” => “What did I miss or didn’t understand?”
“I should have known” => “Could I have known?”
“I could never be that person” => “How do I become that person, and is it worth it?”
“I’m not good enough” => “How do I get good enough?”
“I don’t know the right people” => “How do I meet the right people?”

Failure can beget success.

But only if you learn how to fail. 

“We’ll just use AI for that!”

Heard that this week. And I heard something that sounded exactly like it in 1997: “We’ll just use the internet for that!”

It’s a great marketing pitch. It’s a great pitch from the CEO or the COO. It’s a great pitch for your social media feed or a TEDx talk.

But currently, just like in 1997 with the internet, that’s a meaningless, confusing, or possibly scary statement. It’s just buzzwords. Anybody can say it. Anybody can theorize ways to use AI. Most don’t really know what it means, what it can and can’t do, and how to make it do anything.

Which creates quite the opportunity for us humans. Just like in 1997.

Your name is valuable.

To some degree, it defines your identity. People change their names to redefine their identity, either personally or professionally.

A brand name is valuable. It defines the identity of a company, organization, or movement. Brands change their name when they want to redefine who they are.

If you want to understand or connect with someone or some group better, start with their name.

You’ve been there. As have I.

Sometimes, it just all falls apart. No amount of good intentions, proper practice, or belief could save it.

What do you do?

First, you mourn. That’s OK. In fact, it’s necessary. Your beliefs and intentions, although ultimately askew, were initially well-placed. Their nobility requires acknowledgment.

Second, you learn. What happened? Is there anything to take from it? Yes, there always is. Find that.

Third, you turn the page. Could be scary. Could be exciting. Should be both. The clean sheet of paper.

Imagining all of the beautiful colors, shapes, and designs that may end up on that clean sheet of paper is the most important part.

A conversation I had recently:

Them: “I know you think that life’s better with AI, but I just can’t get on board with this AI thing.”

Me: “Really? Why not?”

Them: “AI will be our downfall. Our lives will eventually suck. That’s how they’ll get us.”

(Note: this person didn’t mean in the “Skynet-AI-will-kill-all-humans” way but in the “Vonnegut’s-Player-Piano” way.)

Me: “Ah, well, to be clear, my view is not ‘life is better with AI!’ My view is, ‘it’s an inevitable technology and it’s here and it will continute. Therefore, I want to learn about it, how to use it, and where the dangers really are.'”

Them: “But aren’t you afraid? Afraid that it will make you obsolete? Afraid that it’ll f— everything up?”

Me: “I don’t think about it like that because it’s here. I can’t change that. I accept it. I consider it like the car. Was life better before a car? Some think so. I could definitely argue that it was. But if you gotta get somewhere, would you rather have a car or not?”

Them: “Yeah, but nobody forces the car on me.”

Me: “OK, fair enough, but again, if you gotta get somewhere, would you rather choose a car? It’s a tool.”

Them: “Yeah, but I don’t understand AI. I don’t understand how it works. I don’t understand how to use it. I know how to use the car.”

And now we’re at the heart of the matter. The fear of the unknown. Which is all the more reason to dig in, figure it out, and join the conversation.

I do believe that life with AI has downsides. Maybe giant downsides. I think shared reality will suffer. I very much worry about bad actors and incentivization. I think truth may suffer. I’m concerned about the growing gap between have’s and have-not’s. I’m worried about more division. 

“Is life better with AI?” isn’t a very useful question at a macro level. AI is here. The cats out of the bag and ain’t going back in.

I think a better question is, “How do I make life better with AI?”

“At the heart of most stable governments is a willingness to share power with people you disagree with–and may even hate.”

– Sebstian Junger, Freedom

Yes, and not just governments. Great teams share this trait.

Plus, there is another quality — a willingness to lose.

In a healthy democracy, it’s the willingness to admit you’ve lost the election and will commit to the peaceful transfer of power.

On a healthy team, it’s the willingness try new things that don’t work out. It’s the willingness to admit that the other idea is better. It’s the willingness to commit to something you don’t (yet) agree with.

It’s ok to argue. It’s ok to debate. It’s ok to not agree. It’s ok to passionately and emotionally defend your position. But it’s not ok to work against it for the sake of winning.

Great team members, like great government leaders, have a willingness to lose. 

Seth Godin often laments the race to the bottom.

I’m with him. I paraphrase this as the hyperbolic version of “if some is good, more is better” — faster, bigger, cheaper, easier, less thought required, more dopamine engaged, bigger margins, all the colors, more buttons, etc. The Costco approach. “Why buy the amount I need when I can buy six times as much for four times the cost?!”

But another way I think of it is “lowest common denominator product and service development and offerings.” The race to the bottom is the illusion of “it’s better for everyone” — the public, the shareholders, the executives, etc. 

The paradox of the race to the bottom is that, taken over small windows and myopic variables, maximizing (or minimizing) can lead to a great product or service. Apple was a master at this in its heyday (which it has long since lost).

There’s no doubt that AI enables exponentially more. More videos created faster. More articles created faster. More books created faster. More web pages created faster. More ideas created faster. More choices created faster. More code created faster.

And more is better, right?

You’ve been here before. You know how it plays out. The last time it happened, you were optimistic it was the last time.

But here you are again because, once again, you aren’t in control of your own destiny.

How will you handle this one?

You will mourn appropriately but then transition.
You will focus on what you can control.
You will take care of your people.
You will be a professional.
You will be an example.
You will try new things.
You will be optimistic.
You will have faith.
You will add value.
You will try again.
You will learn.
You will lead.

How many more shots do you have left? Well, as many as you’re willing to take. 

When I was a little kid, I remember watching cliff divers on TV. ABC’s Wide World of Sports, if I remember correctly.

“That is the coolest thing anyone could ever do! I want to do that!”

The diver stands calm and stoic on the smallest of rock outcroppings. The camera (brilliantly) set up behind and above pans slowly, giving the viewer the perspective of nothing but the sunny, warm air and the blue water seemingly miles below. He closes his eyes, takes a breath, coils slightly, and launches into the great beyond, arms outstretched, body arched, legs together, and toes pointed. Two seconds or two minutes later, he breaks the plane of the beautiful blue water and disappears beneath, leaving no trace that he was ever there. The very definition of majestic. 

Well, my 8-year-old self had no idea that my 18+-year-old self would be wildly allergic to heights. Consequently, I’ve never cliff-dived from 60+ feet into the gleaming and warm Pacific like those majestic divers in Acapulco. I have, however, jumped from a 10m diving platform and 20-ish feet from the rocks along one of the local streams running in and around Warren, VT. 

In both cases, I was neither calm nor majestic. At the 10m board, I needed a physical push from a friend.

Sometimes it’s gonna be ugly. Sometimes, you’re gonna need a push from a friend. Sometimes, you’re not gonna know exactly what’s at the bottom.

But you’re gonna have to dive off the cliff anyway.

Does he make something that he likes, or does he make something that will sell?

These, of course, are not mutually exclusive. He can create something that he likes and sells. On one axis, this is what separates professional artists from amateur artists. But not entirely. Professionalism is a mindset, a commitment, and a practice — not strictly “I got paid.”

Now with AI, the artist has access to new tools and techniques that can both expand their creative possibilities and increase the speed at which creation happens. AI might even help the artist bridge the gap between something that he likes and something that will sell.

Maybe AI helps create more artists — people with ideas but not skills. AI provides the skill set, and humans provide the perspective.

But the artist’s dilemma remains.

Nature certainly has an order.

The circle of life. The laws of physics and chemistry. Evolution. Our understanding of this order changes over time, but we recognize that order exists objectively, and that it has been designed in from the beginning.

Humans also have an order to our world.

Justice. Altruism. Aesthetics. Purpose. As with nature, our understanding of human order changes over time, and we recognize that this order is not designed in, but relative to culture, time, and place.

I sometimes wonder if the natural order of things and the human order of things are at odds. Maybe the magic happens when we seek to align the two orders.