Regular Blog Posts
Hustle Hustle Hustle
I was hustling with my startup and I hustled right into a 3 week recovery period.
No breaks lead to burnout and it can happen faster than you think
(Three Questions)
Why is “grinding” a way of hiding
Why should you make your breaks in advance
What can you do to create boundaries that help you stay at your best
1. What is your purpose?
I don’t know yet. Some things that I suspect are a part of it:
Growth Teaching Understanding
2. After a fall, what have been your learnings?
Sometimes you need to stay down to heal, have no shame about it.
Time does heal most wounds when you find a way to talk about them, if you don’t they fester.
3. How do you identify opportunities in life?
Trying things that make me go…”hmmm.” Forcing myself to go talk to people. Fellowship groups.
What do you do with those?
Try the smallest step, however, I can define it.
What is your daily routine?
Writing a blog post and a ton of coffee. I don’t think I do anything else every day.
Product maturity – I’ve had some thoughts swirling about a product team’s maturity. There are several factors, I think. Here are five that immediately come to mind:
A team doing these things on a high level is mature. How is your team doing?
What could be worth doing right now, but you choose not to do it?
As if any of those companies aren’t hiring from a small subset of the American population that has “culture fit.”
This type of “evangelizing” of tech is dangerous because it assumes all things being equal. This cultural blindness is why a liberal arts degree is important, why history is important, and why con-men (Jason Calacanis isn’t ignorant – he surely knows why this is dangerous) like this shouldn’t be listened to.
Is learning how to code good – sure, much like any skill, one can find plenty of enrichment. Learn for yourself, build stuff, get a gig with it, I’m all for it – but to pretend it’s some sort of cureall for poverty?
Yuck.
Outcomes & Alignment – Leaders lead by making better outcomes for their teams. When you are leading, it is more impactful for you to spend time aligning than whatever other work that may be available. That is the trick, actually, and it is counter-intuitive. You probably become a leader because you did the other stuff well, and now you aren’t supposed to do it anymore. Well, in the words of Marshall Goldsmith – What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.
The Scientific Method – The scientific method works. Within product orgs, I’ve worked with teams that wonder how to get research off the ground. Well, there are a ton of techniques – and your mileage may vary on all of them. Before you get to them though, it is time better spent to review the scientific method. Framing your research with those tentpoles in mind lessens the risk of it being nonsense. Once you have that down – those other methods make a lot more sense.
What is the scariest question you can ask yourself at this moment?
Routine Restarts – I lost my bank card a few weeks ago. Losing that card sucks because I have to spend time resigning up for all my memberships. Here is the blessing though, because of the forced interrupt of a different card number, I have to opportunity to look at my memberships again and see if I want to go through the trouble.
I said no to a few – worth the five dollar service charge (for replacing the card) for that alone.
Pivots – My current break away from work got me the space to think of different pivots with myself, my staff, and other teams. Pivots are hard work, especially emotionally. You were wrong. Others came along with you.
My best advice for these moments (and even in typing this, I am telling myself) is to be as honest as possible. Start with the tough part first, and then walk the others through.
They will appreciate it.
Critique – Is only a gift when it is straightforward. Everything else is a soft lie, and a waste of time. Avoid the showbiz advice of telling them what you are going to tell them.
Just tell them.
It’s tempting to push a ton of goals at once. It looks good at the beginning, and great to sell.
What ends up happening is missed expectations, promises broken, and burnout.
Try to keep things simple. One goal. Consider it, work on it, shape it, treat it as a living being.
You’ll feel much better and accomplish more in the long run.
Questions
Blog Posts (Put this in the search bar on this page 🙂 )
Books
Set boundaries early and often. Recognize the constraints and adjust as soon as possible. Don’t fight the tide. Force break creates space to make great.
Questions
HOT! – It is blazing on the east coast. Stay cool where you can. Drink water. Work can wait.
Kick start – Some projects need to sit for a while, and some projects need a kickstart after sitting. When is the last time you reviewed your work? You may be surprised by what you find, even months later.
People don’t leave their jobs, they leave their bosses.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter what the perks are or how much you pay people, if they don’t feel like they are being heard, they are already one foot out the door.
So how do you change that? Well, a cup of coffee can’t hurt.
Go take a team member out to a cup of joe, or lunch, or even a drink and get ready to just listen. What you’ll find out of the office will give you much more context in the office so people will feel like they are heard. Then they begin to trust.
Watch the work get much better as a result of that trust.
A cup of coffee can mean much more than a raise if you talk to your people.
Questions
Books
From the desk of Adam Thomas 