Most people do the obvious thing, that’s why we call it obvious.
A new product, idea or technology is rarely obvious, at least at first.
So the work of scale is to be seen as inevitable. The stepwise process of becoming the obvious choice.
Skipping steps requires insisting that we’re the obvious choice, but that rarely works. Instead, we work to create the conditions for others to decide that we are.
Create a document, several pages long, that explains who you are. What sort of learner are you? Do you have degrees or expertise? What sort of change are you making, who works with you, what are your standards? How do you want to engage?
Periodically, upload the doc to the chat you’re having with an LLM. Let it know you’re offering a reminder of how you want to work together.
One size doesn’t fit all.
Also: Don’t look to AI as a source for verified facts. The phrase, “That can’t be right, please double check and offer sources,” is not going to hurt the AI’s feelings, but it might save your project.
Human beings are used to being productive by decreasing the amount of time and effort we put into something. Computers don’t work that way. Give them instructions on how to take the long way around and you’ll both come out ahead.
If you want to make a change (or make a living) it might pay to find a topic that people hesitate to talk about. There’s enormous leverage in making the uncomfortable urgent enough to take action on.
One of the easiest ways to improve public health and reduce cancer is by increasing the adoption of colonoscopies. No scientific breakthrough is needed, just a cultural shift.
The same sort of impact happens when we prioritize women’s health, or retirement savings or drunk driving.
Culture works hard to maintain its status quo, and persistent community action can change our standards.
There’s “regular luck” and “earned luck.”
When a stranger dies and leaves you $10,000,000, that’s regular luck. Undeserved, unearned, a bolt out of the blue. Someone is going to win the lottery and it might be you.
The other sort of luck happens after a lot of focus and effort.
This is the third novel that becomes a bestseller, or the hard work that turns into a promotion to VP of sales.
It’s easy to imagine that earned luck is well deserved, because it is. But quite often, earned luck, while earned, doesn’t arrive.
Acknowledging the boost from our good luck doesn’t diminish the hard work we put into the project. In fact, it celebrates it.
It’s hard work to stick around long enough to get lucky.
Friendship is part of it, but it’s mutual forward motion that transforms a group.
The shared journey and mutual respect of a cohort can change the arc of our work and our lives. When we’re in sync, we can find the courage to build something important.
Fifteen years ago, I ran a three-day seminar in my office for about 12 women. The FeMBA cohort took a life of its own, and last week I was lucky enough to join them for their reunion. My role in this cohort was tiny–I was simply there at the beginning.
Entrepreneurship isn’t about building a giant company that makes money. Instead, it’s the attitude of solving problems, creating leverage and building something bigger than one’s self. When people are enrolled in this journey, they’re open to possibility and optimism.
The internet has put millions of people a single click away from each of us, but too often, it simply confuses us with the endless blur of ‘next’. When we take the time to commit, it turns out that there are people right here, right now, eager to connect and join us on our journey.
I’m going to do another FeMBA session in December, joined by Jessica Quinn, one of the original members of the cohort. If you’d like to apply, all the details are right here. The event is free, and lunch is provided as well. It’s in person, in my office, December 2, 3 and 4. We’re looking for people who are early in their journey who have already shown a commitment to making a difference and leading.
Of course, you don’t need to apply to be part of cohort. You can simply start your own.
For many of us in the industrialized world, happiness is directly related to how big the container is.
Overflowing vs. skimpy.
Adequate vs. generous.
Overloaded vs. slack to spare.
We know that making the plate smaller helps us appreciate what we’re served.
Get the bucket size right and your life changes. This is probably the easiest, fastest and most productive way to improve our well being.
There’s more software available for free than ever before, and a lot of it is really good. Handmade by real people, for real people.
If we’re going to pay for it, it needs to be extraordinary.
For the last few years, I’ve been using Superhuman, which costs me about a dollar a day. Even if you don’t use email as much as I do, I think you’ll find that it’s a bargain. (The link gets you two free months). It takes about three hours to learn, which is a big part of why it works.
I also subscribe to the vetted suite of tools at Setapp. They rarely disappoint.
Roon is software to control your home stereo. I have a lifetime subscription, and the link gets you thirty days for free. If you love music, you’ll get a lot out of this.
Lightburn is my favorite way to control a laser cutter.
Bitwarden is a well crafted password manager, and it’s very cheap.
Nisus Writer Pro is a delightful word processor for the Mac. Not distracting or showy, it simply works great.
Ocenaudio is my audio editor of choice. I happily pay for it, but the free version is great.
And yes, Puzzmo. I had a really good score on Bongo today.
Qobuz unlocks millions of tracks of hi-rez quality music. I promise you can hear the difference, especially with headphones.
Yes, of course I’m using software from giant companies like Adobe and Anthropic, but you knew about them already.
And if it’s books you are after, seths.store is a place to find mine.
A problem without a solution isn’t a problem, it’s a situation we have to live with.
But most existing problems do have solutions. We just don’t like that solution.
The solution might be challenging, or feel risky, or lead to an outcome we’re not happy about.
It’s tempting to announce that this means the problem is unsolvable. It’s not. It’s just not an easy or low-cost solution.
It’s even more tempting to do the worst thing: pretend that the problem doesn’t matter. Ignore it. Avoid people who insist that not only is it a problem, but there’s a solution worth pursuing.
Sometimes, problems ignored simply disappear. Not often, though.
It doesn’t happen all at once.
And it doesn’t work suddenly.
A home pressure cooker doesn’t use more electricity than a hot pot. And it isn’t as fast as a microwave. Instead, it builds up over time, producing results with a surprisingly small amount of effort.
We’re impatient, and so we don’t consistently apply pressure when we have the chance, and we often crumple under pressure when it arrives.
Consistent, gradual and persistent are the unsung forces of cultural change.
We talk about networks but we are rarely clear about what we mean.
A specific sort of network is the grid, and even that idea is complicated by two competing meanings.
There’s the benign and powerful grid of peer-to-peer connection. Culture is built on this grid. This is friends, neighbors, co-workers and people who find and engage with each other without a central authority. Some people are closer to you on your grid, while others engage over there.
Cities work because they amplify the power of the connections our grid provides. They enable more collisions and make those collisions more likely to be productive.
You can become a hermit by walking away from these peer-to-peer connections, but it’s likely your peace of mind and productivity will decline.
But when we talk about going “off the grid”, we usually mean something very different. This is the grid that is centrally controlled. If the power company or the water company or the social media company decides to raise its rates or cut us off, there’s not a lot we can do about it.
Solar power is a philosophical affront to power companies. It delivers the very thing they are built around, but without a centralized grid to profit from.
Peer to peer computer networks, built on adversarial interoperability, resilience and extensibility have long been competing with the AT&T/IBM model of centralized engineering, control and pricing.
Bill McKibben’s new book on solar is thrilling. It’s filled with good news about dramatic leaps in efficiency, cost-effectiveness and battery technology. Solar represents a system change in how people (particularly billions who currently have no electricity at all) will live. Acumen’s been doing groundbreaking work on this for more than a decade, and it works, despite the lack of interest from most big energy companies and from government officials that would prefer centralized authority.
Tim Wu wrote about the phone company’s desire for a chokepoint years ago, and Rebecca Giblin & Cory Doctorow update this with their brilliant new book on chokepoints.
Which leads to Cory’s latest, out soon. When companies run out of inspiration, creativity and innovation, they revert to seeking monopoly. Creating chokepoints and offering less and less value is a lazy way to make the stock price go up. No wonder it’s endemic. Enshittification is real, and if we care, we can make it go away.
We can get off the grid that maintains a sclerotic status quo and get to work at building something better. Something that relies on the other grid, the peer-to-peer grid we evolved to be part of.
