It’s interesting. I found myself referring to The Doctor as “he” while watching the first episode with Jodie Whittaker.
Not sure what that means exactly. Other than perhaps i’m completely bought into the idea that the men I’ve been watching for the last 10 years are inside the woman I’m seeing on screen.
She’s fantastic all on her own, too.
If you want to hear the truth, you need to make it easy to tell
Jeremiah is the most effective communicator I know. This is his latest tool for understanding an aspect of our world: health and wellbeing. A very critical subject! Please share and show him love.
Here’s Stewart Alsop’s podcast episode where he interviews me about my anxiety and panic attacks.
It seems to me that consistency is both incredibly rare and one of the best predictors of success.
I always get a little sad when I think about lost connections and wasted potential
I’ve been saying this for a while. It’s a flywheel that's picking up speed.
”No matter how and when the Trump presidency ends, the specter of illiberalism will continue to haunt American politics. A highly politicized judiciary will remain, in which close Supreme Court decisions will be viewed by many as of dubious legitimacy, and future judicial appointments will be fiercely contested. The racial division, cultural conflict, and political polarization Trump has encouraged and intensified will be difficult to heal. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and uncontrolled campaign spending will continue to result in elections skewed in an unrepresentative and undemocratic direction. Growing income disparity will be extremely difficult to halt, much less reverse.”
Thomas Riker after taking over Defiant and getting into a little skirmish (on DS9 episode “Defiant”): “Tough Little Ship”
William Riker after seeing the defiant survive the battle with the borg (in First Contact movie): “Tough little ship”
Callback!
It's easier to understand other people when you first understand yourself
My favorite psychological mind fuck is when someone accuses you of something and then asks you 'why are you being defensive' when you attempt to explain your POV </sarcasm>
Great Advice:
“Don't do anything just because you can. Don't do anything you don't love. And don't do anything because other people think you should. Oh, don't do anything because you're afraid to do something else.”
- You Me Her
The secret to a happy life is to have deep real-time gratitude for the good times and make the best of the bad times.
And remember “This too shall pass”
Watching a judge and candidate for the highest court in the land argue against the FBI as part of the investigative process is hilarious
It's so funny watching Trump reveal his thought process and tactics by the way he accuses the other side of things.
Everything he's accused others of doing over the last few years, he's shown are simply him projecting his own demons on others.
1. They're conning you - he's the con man.
2. Clinton is using charity to profit and influence pedal - that's what he's doing
3. Lock her up - his friends are all getting locked up
4. Other countries are laughing at us - he's so deathly afraid of this. People laughing at him. His fragile ego can't handle it. And yet the UN all laughed in his face.
It’s so fascinating how big the gap is between intellectually knowing a thing and emotionally and viscerally experiencing that same thing.
I’ve seen so many people (and I’ve been so guilty of this myself) armchair quarterbacking things that they think they intellectually understand but have no actual practical experience doing.
It's so easy to be dismissive, divisive, suspicious, jealous, fearful etc...
Having experienced a range of these things from both sides I can say they feel totally different after you’ve lived it - if only because it gives you more empathy.
Some examples that come to mind...
1. Being an entreprenuer
2. Working at a high profile company
3. Being at the center of a negative media narrative
4. Delivering real software at scale
5. Having money
6. Living and working in the US and Silicon Valley
7. Owning/driving exotic cars
Ever since about 6 years old I've had social anxiety/panic attacks.
For the longest time, it was a secret I'd only tell to very few people who knew me best. I was embarrassed by it. If I'm honest it can still be quite embarrassing.
I always thought it was a thing that was relatively unique to me because no one else had ever mentioned experiencing quite the same thing.
I've slowly come to learn that most people struggle with a wide range of mental health issues but they don't talk about it because of the taboo.
So over the years I've decided to be more open about it hoping that it might help others who experience the same thing to feel more comfortable and less isolated.
That being said, I've never really gone into too much detail about exactly what I feel, why and when.
So for the sake of posterity and sharing, here are some of the key details about the things I experience. I've never really shared this kind of detail with almost anyone!
Feel free to tune out now if you want to avoid TMI.
1. Things that are outside of my comfort zone tend to directly, quickly and acutely affect my stomach/digestion.
2. Depending on my constitution on the day and the extremity of the situation it can manifest on a spectrum from mild nausea all the way to an immediate need to vomit.
3. As my comfort zone grows through experience and confidence the type of activities that make me feel this way become fewer and more extreme. For example, in the beginning (around 6 years old), I'd have anxiety or panic attacks simply going to school in the morning or hanging out with friends at the mall. As that got better, it became talking to clients on the phone. Then in person. Then it became about presentations. Then only important presentations and so on.
4. These days it's mainly become something that is limited to speaking in front of groups where I'm the pre-announced presenter (5+ people) or tests/exams/key make-or-break meetings. Basically think of Richard from HBO's Silicon Valley. Let's just say I can relate to that guy in a lot of ways 🙂
5. My comfort zone can contract if I don't continue to do things at the edges.
6. While the initial feeling might be something I can breathe through to make it subside, the resulting effect on my stomach is a lot like rapid onset food-poisoning. Once it happens, there's really very little that can be done except to wait for the poisoning and nausea to pass (either by itself with time or with more direct means - TMI! haha)
7. Although I've developed a number of hacks to deal with it, it's not really something that any drugs or techniques have had a substantial positive impact on.
8. This seems to be a hereditary thing that many of the males in my family across multiple generations suffer from. If I had not lived my life in a 'commit now and then figure out how' kind of mode, I probably would not have left home - much less my home town. It's made every single step that much harder to do.
An interesting phenomena I’ve noticed when advising startups is the shallow understanding of what MVP means. Almost everybody uses the term now, but few understand how to successfully operationalize it.
1. It’s often difficult to determine exactly what the MVP is. It’s partly science and it’s partly art. The answer often requires a mix of experience and taste.
2. Often, after building the MVP, they continue to build more and more product without going deep on user acquisition and feedback.
3. Sometimes they build multiple MVPs of multiple major product areas leaving much of the product surface area in a largely broken state.
Remember, the purpose of an MVP is to get it into customer’s hands and learn and grow with your shared understanding. You need to continue to iterate and polish it until you can see your own face in the reflection.
Remember it’s “ship and iterate”, not “Build, build, build”. Shipping doesn’t mean just putting it on production. It also means putting it into customer’s hands at as much scale as possible.
Founders sometimes ask me if some piece of conventional wisdom they've heard or the advice that I'm giving is "necessary" or "mandatory".
I always try to explain that almost all of the tactics and advice I'm sharing can only increase the probabilities of success. It can't guarantee it. There's also always a chance you can succeed without following any given piece of "best practice" advice.
That being said, if you start bending or breaking too many of these guidelines you really start to diminish your chances of success.
Funny enough, many of the lessons I share day-to-day were not learned from a book or from someone else giving me the advice - I had to learn them the hard way by ignoring the advice in the first place (thinking I had a better way) and finding out I was wrong.
One of the disadvantages of living on the 44th floor with a shower that has one wall entirely made up of a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city is that sometimes random people slide down from the roof to clean it while you’re showering.
