The tl;dr: Optics are a part of your strategy work. To ignore the politics of your market segment is to ensure blind spots for competitors to enter the market. As the director of product at a current incumbent in the space, this has a ton of application and I’ve seen the effects as I’ve ramped up our operations.
I may do a deeper dive here at some point in a Medium post, but the main idea here is clear – you have to think about how you appear in the market.
*I’m embarrassed to say I bought this four years ago and just started on it a few weeks ago. Granted – it makes way more sense now than it would have them.
Yoga this morning was rather difficult. The teacher had to assist me with almost every pose, at least it felt like it. I put pressure on my ankle (incorrect) and due to a sports injury in my youth, I couldn’t bend my leg fully.
My pride made me feel like
Yoga this morning was rather tricky.
The teacher had to assist me with almost every pose, at least it felt like it. I put pressure on my ankle (incorrect), and due to a sports injury in my youth, I couldn’t bend my leg fully.
At the beginning of the class, my pride made me feel like a loser.
I thought about my childhood.
I always hated help.
Help made me weak. Help meant I wasn’t like everyone else. Help meant I wasn’t a star.
Childish, yes, but parts of it continued to my adulthood, and I had flashes of it pop up today.
But after the fourth or fifth pose I needed help with, I felt a shift, and as the class ended, I thanked the teacher for her help and care, and I went home.
What changed?
Yoga functions as therapy. I am both the therapist and the patient. I can acknowledge it. Because I am in the room, and present, I get the space to confront those feelings, and I see what is real and what isn’t.
I’ve come to love the practice.
I can continue to get better.
Help gets me there.
So fuck pride.
loser. Everyone else was nailing the poses. It sucked.
I thought about my childhood. I always hated help. Help made me weak. Help meant I wasn’t like everyone else. Help meant I wasn’t a star.
Childish, yes, but parts of it continued to my adult hood, and I had flashes of it pop up today.
I’m looking at “A Testament of Hope” on my bookshelf. It’s a collection of writing and speeches from Martin Luther King Jr. I landed on an interview he did with Playboy Magazine, where he is speaking on his mistakes. One of the biggest to him was trying to bring white churches into the fold.
Strange, because if you ask everyone now, they all supported it.
We hope that time bends towards justice, but we have to realize people will shift their position on that bend when convenient.
Work is work, even when you enjoy the work you are doing.
When you enjoy work, you find yourself in “the zone.” “The zone” is where your focus is razor-sharp, and time seems to slip away, and it often happens when you are working on something that is difficult and you have no distractions. For most creatives I know, it’s an awesome place.
With that said, it still can lead to burnout since you’re working your brain. Monitor it like you monitor any other work.
Your network is a numbers game, especially at first.
Sometimes, I’m asked how to build a network, especially since I came to New York with no connections. The first thing I recommend doing is picking up this big orange book and reading it. The second thing, start playing the numbers game.
Now, this doesn’t mean go to a bar (unless it does 😉 ). What this means is to find a few events that are interesting to you, and start meeting people. Make it a game. Try to meet three people and get their email address. Email those people the same day and expand on the conversation.
Ask the ones that return a message to continue the conversation over coffee in the afternoon (if you can get away).
A couple of coffee dates here and there, offer to help in any way and suddenly you know some people you like. There is your foundation.
He who prioritizes best wins. Decision science is all the rage now, and for good reason. We’re bombarded with choice and between our phones, our inboxes, and our relationships – it can get very confusing. Things get lost.
One way I try to keep ahead of it is a fifteen-minute session before I leave an environment (home/work) and ask myself a few questions – which I’ll write down.
What did you accomplish today?
What felt good, what felt bad?
What could you have gotten rid of (time-sinks)
Who do you need to have a conversation with?
Is there anything you’d like to defer?
That list of five questions can help with your priority in the next day, and if you are anything like me, get you started in the morning, quickly.
Change the parameters. Gather different perspectives. Find different solutions.
Sometimes, the problem is rooted in our inability to see a different view of the whole thing. IF we are stuck in one perspective, we limit our problem-solving ability.
You have to have a place where you practice and a place where you perform.
I wasted a lot of time not being critiqued because I wanted to keep my work to myself. I paid a heavy price not being prepared because I didn’t practice.
(Three Questions)
How do you build a dojo?
What does performance look like?
How do you seek critique?
There is a lot of power in having some ritual. Especially around our most important tasks. The routines, before and after, set our body and mind for success. They act as a trigger to what important.
From the desk of Adam Thomas 