johnmaconline

Were the Beatles good or just famous?
What about Madonna?
Is Dwayne Johnson good or just famous?
What about Meryl Streep?
Is a Ferrari a good car or just a famous one?
What about a Tesla?

Is your friend a good interior designer even though they’re not on HGTV?
Are you a good musician even though you don’t have tracks on Spotify?
Is your partner a good cook even though they don’t have a spot on the Food Network?

Famous requires the intersection of several variables, some of which you have control over and some of which you don’t.

So does good. But good is in the eye of the beholder. If these people don’t think you’re good, you can choose to look elsewhere for other people.

Focus on good.

We mostly think of deadlines in relation to time. The deadline is a date on the calendar.

In order to meet the deadline we focus, sharpen, make decisions, and clarify what we’ll get done by that deadline. All the things you need to do to make it better anyway.

The power of a deadline is less about time and more about better.

Your desire to optimize might actually be Resistance keeping you from doing the work that matters.

You can’t optimize your sales funnel if you have zero sales.
You can’t optimize your business strategy before you have any business.
You can’t optimize your code before it does anything.

There are a million courses, coaches, and books that you can spend your money on to help you optimize.

But do you have anything to optimize?

Because if not, you’re just optimizing Resistance.

“…but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

• Romans 5:3-4

I see a lot of motivational material about perseverance through suffering (maybe a focus on the self-induced sufferings of workouts, hustle-lifestyle, external success, etc). I also see a lot of marketing material about hope.

I don’t see much about the importance of character. Character feels underrated in the zeitgeist at the moment. 

What Paul reminds us of here is that character is the connector between perseverance and hope. You don’t get to hope without going through character.

Don’t skip character. 

Guy 1: “Tell me about what you do at 4TLAS?”
“Sure. We help small to mid-sized embedded systems teams ramp and scale.”

Guy 1: “How?”
“We have a fully automated, no code CI pipeline that solves the specific problems of embedded development.”

Guy 2: “You mean, like DevOps?”
“Yes, exactly.”

Guy 1 (rolling his eyes): “Oh, that. We had the intern do that.”
Guy 2 (looking at his colleague): “Yes, but it never worked!”
“Yes, exactly. Ours works.”

Not everyone will see your value, but some will. 

Those are your people. 

SpaceX is nuts, and they’re on a roll.

They just stuck the landing with the 233-foot Super Heavy booster nestling into the waiting chopstick arms of the launch gantry. The purpose of catching it like this is for a rapid turnaround for reuse, a simplified landing mechanism (on the booster itself), increasing the safety of the landing, and lower recovery costs. 

Who thinks of catching a rocket with chopsticks? 

What they’re doing right now sits squarely at the intersection of art and engineering. The art of innovation and creativity juxtaposed against the practical implementation through engineering. It’s harder than it may seem, because its not just additive or iterative engineering. It’s taking a look at the current limitations, bottlenecks, and cost points and reimagining solutions. 

The artist says, “What if we did it this way?”
The engineer says, “That’s dumb.”
The artist says, “Yeah, but it’s really cool and interesting.”
The engineer says, “Yeah, but it’s not gonna work.”

This continues. They argue. Probably vehemently at some point. They defend their positions. They iterate. They work on it. 

And then they stick the landing. 

P.S. Boeing just announced they’re laying off 10% of their workforce.

You try to miss the potholes when you see them.

Sometimes you don’t see them in time, or at all, and then bang! Cursing the road crew, the state, the county. You might even take this moment to sling some mud at a presidential candidate.

“Oh, I hope something didn’t break.”

But sometimes it does. Then you’re stuck, waiting for AAA or limping on the donut tire to the first available tire supplier (who’s open). You’re gonna be late. You might even miss it. Not to mention the several hundred dollars you weren’t prepared to spend.

Hitting the pothole sucks.

Did you ever think about it from AAA or the tire supplier’s point of view?

They love the potholes.

How do you decide which one to choose?

It’s partly an engineering question because you have requirements. When making your choice, you must ensure that it meets the requirements, or you’ll be disappointed.

Don’t buy a chair if you need a car. On the other hand, if you need a chair, you could buy a car. Unless you need that chair to fit in your kitchen — and then again, we’re back to requirements.

It’s mostly an emotional decision. Who buys a car because they need a chair? People do, and that’s ok.

One way to satisfy both the engineering and emotional needs of a decision is to find the knee in the curve and choose that one.

The knee in the curve is the spot at which one or more of the constraints go exponentially higher.

The basic model costs $10, the plus costs $12, and the deluxe costs $100. The knee is the plus model.

The basic model is available today for pickup, the plus model is a 3-day lead, and the deluxe will take 6 months. The knee is the plus model.

If you’re a decider, the knee is a great place to position your decision. If you’re a provider, the knee is a great place to position your product.