The Notepod

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Ramblings: I drilled a hole into the wall

“You’ve probably heard the old saying, “people don’t buy the drill; they buy the hole.” Well, I think you need to drill down deeper than that! What they want is not the hole in the wall; they want their wife to stop bitching at them because they haven’t hung that picture yet. They want their kid to be happy because they were able to put the nice neat hole in the front of the birdhouse or make the holes to bolt the jungle gym together.” — Jim Edwards in “Copywriting Secrets”

This is the whole “Five whys” sort of thing.

Anyway, I literally drilled a hole into the wall tonight. It’s my first time actually drilling into a wall. I’m not counting the times where I’ve used a screwdriver and pressed down very hard to then get an anchor into the wall.

I bought a drill and level and all sorts of other stuff that wasn’t entirely necessary. But now I have some holes in the wall.

I’m happy to hire people to do things around the house.

Or I was. But after buying a house, we started paying $100 here, $200 there to do some things that amounted to, well, mostly just drilling into walls.

Now I’m happy to hire some people to do things around the house.

Let’s just say I was much more satisfied paying the plumber to crawl into the crawlspace to cut into the floor and run a water line to the fridge vs. paying the electrician to drill a couple holes to mount a wifi doorbell.

Both jobs were about the same price!

It was all good work. So the unhappiness isn’t toward the people. Just toward myself for not knowing how to drill into a wall. I’ll be useless when the zombies come.

I saw a video on Instagram of someone making fun of the person he hired to mount a TV. The comments, as you might guess, was filled filled with people disparaging the guy for having to hire someone to mount a TV in the first place.

I don’t want to be that guy. (I at least don’t go around making fun of the people doing the work.)

I’m feeling some of the IKEA effect with this new shade: I’m much happier with it than I should be just because I put some of the work in. Like cracking a couple eggs to mix into the cake mix.

Anyway, here’s a book quote that has nothing to do with all of this except that it mentions IKEA. Mark Hunt with a nice analogy about the uselessness of instructions depending on context.

“Yoshida locked in one of my arms and it looked like he was going to get me in an arm bar, but I managed, with pure instinct, to get my knee on his face and out of that position. There was more yelling from my corner, but it was like having Ikea instructions read to you in the original Swedish. As it turns out, it’s pretty much impossible to undertake high-level Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu remotely.” — Mark Hunt in “Born to Fight”

And some puppy tax:

Info Diet: Steph Curry & Draymond Green

Writing on the treadmill again. I finished a kettlebell workout and a short run. Actually, today I do have a book quote. I was about to go dig it up but maybe for these treadmill writing sessions I should have some sort of rule: don’t mix up research and writing.

Or I need to set a timer to search for quotes. Anyway, I can just paraphrase the quote I have in mind. It’s not a specific one either so that’s probably where I’d get stuck when looking it up, deciding which one best captures the idea I was thinking of.

Okay so the idea is from Dan Pink’s book “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing”. There are milestones when it can be good to start something new. Obvious ones are January 1 and the first day at a job. He points out there really are a whole lot of others you can use as well: start of a week, start of a month, etc.

A great period to really shift things is when you have a completely new environment.

Again, starting a new job is good because you have a different office. Or you did, before everyone started working at home. But you probably have a new digital environment.

Anyway, we’re still in the first month of moving into a new house. It provides dozens of new cues.

Whether you use cue-routine-reward or obvious-attractive-easy-satisfying, moving is always a good time to rewire your habits. Here’s my current routine:

  • Wake up
  • Make coffee
  • Take Booster out, play with Booster
  • Feed Booster
  • Kettlebell workout

All of this leading up to work.

Writing this out, basically my dog’s routine is my routine.

Anyway, here are a couple questions from podcasts I listened to this morning.

Would Steph Curry give up the 2017 & 2018 titles to have won the 2016 title, sealing the 73-9 season with a championship?

Source: The Draymond Green Show: “Steph Curry”

Short answer: No, but mannnnn….

Draymond talks about the prep he did for the podcast and I’m glad he took whatever time it took to come up with that question.

You can feel Curry’s sigh when he hears the question.

It’s the sound of a few years of subtext.

  • Would you give up the KD titles to have won the championship?
  • How much does the “Warriors were up 3-1” thing hurt?
  • How much does a single game difference matter? (72-10 Bulls vs. 73-9 Warriors)

Curry does pause to explain his thinking. “Let’s check the resume.”

  • Reality: 3 championships, but losing the 72-9 season
  • Hypothetical: 2 championships, one of them with a 72-9 season

I think if you flesh it out even more, then reality definitely seems better.

  • Fleshed out reality: 3-1 in Finals, losing the 72-9 season
  • Fleshed out hypothetical: 2-2 in Finals, winning the 72-9 season. But then losing to the Cavs twice in the first 2 years with the KD Warriors.

J.R. Smith grabs the rebound, dribbles out, and hits a game-winning turnaround at the buzzer and the Cavs sweep the Warriors for back-to-back titles…

Ramblings: House stuff

I’m writing this on a treadmill right now. I haven’t published anything in what feels like forever. There are a few things that I want to make but then I just end up playing Starcraft or trying to tidy up the house. Unfortunately I’m doing the bad version of tidying up, where I don’t actually get rid of anything. So I just move things from boxes to plastic bins with some future hope that I’ll organize things and get rid of stuff.

There’s just a lot of stuff. It baffles me how we fit it into our smaller apartment. It’s like those mattresses that come compressed so they can be shipped and once you rip the box open everything sort of very slowly expands out.

Anyway, the house is coming together slowly. I could write something about how the house buying process went, but have a fear that someone will point out mistakes we made and that maybe we overpaid by some very large amount of money. Which would be helpful the next time we buy a house but it’d really be helpful if we were doing that any time sooner than years from now.

Okay so on a positive note, I mentioned I’m writing this on a treadmill.

One of the splurges I made shortly after moving in was to just get a treadmill with foldable arms so that it can go under a walking desk.

Here’s my current view:

Having a separate office in the house is great, especially after 10 years of studios and 1 bedroom apartments in New York and San Francisco.

I’m also working on building out the gym but currently just have before pictures. (To go along with like 20 years of “before” body pictures with no good “after” photo in that same stretch of time.)

Here’s a photo of the current setup.

If I flipped the camera around you’d see my face and also like 300 cardboard boxes.

And here’s the current outdoor setup for kettlebells.

I have six horse stall mats. Which do fit in the back of a RAV4 pretty well:

And, yes, they do smell like a tire shop and quickly made the garage smell like one. So I’ve pulled them out around the perimeter of the house to bake in the sun for a few weeks while I work on getting rid of the cardboard mountain.

There’s not really a book note here, but I just wanted to share some current shots of the office and gym in hopes that someday there will be good “after” photos.

And I wanted to get in the habit of writing posts on the treadmill.

So this is that.

 

We’re just a leisurely afternoon (so what?)

From “The Dark Forest” by Cixin Liu:

Two centuries was far too short for any visible change to come to these rocky mountains. What was the human world like in the eyes of the mountains? Perhaps just something they saw on a leisurely afternoon. First, a few small living beings appeared on the plain. After a while, they multiplied, and after another while they erected structures like anthills that quickly filled the region.

My wife and I are finally hopping on the Euphoria train. One of the episodes has a few different lines about memory and high school and the legacy of it all.

I’m old enough now to see that you do just forget most of the stuff that happened in high school. There are some peak moments. Some of the friends you stay in touch with. A few you actually do still see regularly as adults.

It doesn’t make the time unimportant. It’s a high leverage point in life where a lot of your future beliefs are going to be shaped. Even if it’s by interactions with people you’ll never talk to again after graduation.

“Whenever I try to remember friends from high school, friends from college, or even just friends from five years ago, my memory always creates the illusion that we were together constantly, just like those kids on Saved by the Bell. However, this was almost never the case. Whenever I seriously piece together my past, I inevitably uncover long stretches where somebody who (retrospectively) seemed among my closest companions simply wasn’t around.” — Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman

Now, I’ve been reading a lot of “how to write on the internet” sort of stuff lately. There should always be a CTA. Even if you’re not selling something, you should at least give the reader some sort of action to take. If you tell a story, there should be an answer to the reader’s “so what?”

So what do you do if you can’t tie something to an action the reader can take? I don’t know. Maybe remember that we’re all just a leisurely afternoon to the mountains. And the mountains are a leisurely afternoon for a galaxy.

And then hit publish anyway.

Podcast Note | Leveling Up with Eric Siu: “2M Monthly Podcast Downloads, Selling to HubSpot, Twitter Growth, and Angel Investing with Sam Parr.”

  • Podcast
    Leveling Up with Eric Siu
  • Episode Title
    2M Monthly Podcast Downloads, Selling to HubSpot, Twitter Growth, and Angel Investing with Sam Parr
  • Episode links
    Apple Podcasts • Spotify

Some of my favorite points from the podcast:

  • Get your nut (whether it’s $20 million or not): Sam says he wanted to make enough money by 30 to not have to work again. Selling The Hustle to HubSpot got him there.
  • Podcasting can feel like a job (but that can be a good thing): Though My First Million can feel like (and in many ways is) a casual conversation between Sam and Shaan, but they do deliberately work to improve as podcasters. Sam says the actual recording part is short, but he thinks about the podcast all the time outside of that. Some of the off the cuff jokes are workshopped a little bit. Whatever they’re doing, it’s working.
  • Promote your things in the same media: Particularly with podcasts, it’s good to find ways to promote your podcasts on other podcasts. It’s hard to convert people across types of media.
  • Why Sam is learning about real estate: Tech companies need to continuously innovate and can be at risk long term. But he wants to get into investing in things that he can pass on to future children.
  • Read “How to Get Rich” and “Mastery”: To get very rich, you need to get very good at something. It’ll take some time, but it’s worth it.
  • Sam’s two types of audiobooks: Nonfiction learning material are for his walks. Fiction books are for falling asleep to at night.
  • Best recent purchase – one button camera setup: He spent a few thousand dollars to get a really good webcam and recording setup. One button and he’s ready to go.
  • Morning routine: Wake up at 6:30 AM (no phones in the bedroom), get coffee and read for one hour while taking notes, go for an hour long walk, then work, eat at noon, then around 4 to 6ish he’ll start an intense workout.

How Jony Ive sketches (and why fast is better)

Don’t let that idea get stuck in your head. I’m reading “Jony Ive” by Leander Kahny and he describes brainstorms with the team where everyone has their sketchbook and they sketch together for a few hours every week.

Weekly meetings ensure the design process is collaborative. Two or three times a week, Jony’s entire team gathers around the kitchen table for brainstorming sessions. All of the designers must be present. No exceptions. The sessions typically last for three hours, starting at nine or ten a.m.

But first, coffee.

The brainstorms begin with coffee. A couple of the designers play barista, making coffee for the group from a high-end espresso maker in the kitchen. Daniele De Iuliis, the Italian from the United Kingdom, is regarded as the coffee guru. “Danny D was the person who educated us all on coffee and grind and the color of the crema, how to properly do the milk, how temperature is important and all that stuff,” said Satzger, who was one of his keenest disciples.

Jony Ive sketching

How does Ive sketch? Fast.

He is a good at it, but emphasizes speed over detail. “He always wanted to get a thought down on paper so that people could understand it really quickly,” said Satzger. “Jony’s drawings were really sketchy, with a shaky hand. His drawing style was really interesting.”

Why thinking together works

Whipping the sketchbooks out means that everyone’s thinking is steered in the same direction week by week. But there’s still the freedom of each individual sketchbook. Go wild, but on the same idea. Then they’re able to store those sketchbooks to refer back to, compounding the knowledge week over week. In “The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain”, Annie Murphy Paul points out the power of staying in sync:

“Here the function of shared attention is not so much the expert instruction of a novice but rather the maintenance of a mutual store of information and impressions. We feel compelled to continuously monitor what our peers are paying attention to, and to direct our own attention to those same objects. (When the face of everyone on the street is turned skyward, we look up too.) In this way, our mental models of the world remain in sync with those of the people around us.”

No myth: you can put ideas in other people’s heads

You don’t need Leo and crew to do a dream heist to implant an idea in someone’s head. You just need a pencil. In “Every Tool’s a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It”, Adam Savage describes this power:

“In my experience, the ability to take an idea from your own mind and transfer it to the mind of another person is intoxicating. It is a kind of creative empowerment that makes all your other crazy ideas feel maybe not so crazy. And the fact that you only need a pencil and a piece of paper to make it happen, that is most empowering of all.”

The next time you find yourself fumbling to describe an idea to someone, try sketching it out instead. If they think the idea still stinks, at least you’ll know you were talking about the same thing.