Offer pain when it’s necessary

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It’s often true that pain can make you a better person. Even with your body, broken bones end up stronger than they were before the break (at least for a while).

However, sometimes intentional pain can be a good thing. In his book “Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors“, David C. Baker explains how professionals can be like physicians, saying:

“I want you to be like the physician who (hesitantly) hurts patients in pursuit of making them well. I don’t want you to be the money-grubbing, power-loving consultant who wants adoring followers.“

Or, as I’ve heard elsewhere, “surgery is simply hurting your body in a very specific way“.

In Baker’s case, he was sharing how professionals need to push hard in order to help their clients succeed. Strategies need to be set, tactics need to change, and you’ve got to work hard. The end result will be a successful engagement, even if the middle gets a bit painful.

Quality comes from quantity

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There’s often a tension we face when considering “quality” versus “quantity”, but I don’t think that they’re opposing forces. Years ago I shared about making more pots, where art students that created more pottery did better work than those that focused on making one perfect pot.

A recent episode of the “How to Take Over the World” podcast focused on composer John Williams and his similar approach. If you’re not familiar with his name, you’re certainly familiar with his work which has included films such as Jaws, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter and many others. Here is a quick video with some of his most famous work:

He’s considered one of the greatest film composers of all time, and his work was certainly very high quality, but it came via quantity. From the show:

Quantity versus quality is a false dichotomy. More often than not, quality comes from quantity. He talks about his score for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and his music is actually a key part of the plot in that movie. It’s a movie about aliens coming to visit Earth, and they send a message in the form of music, and it’s five notes. intriguing and mysterious. He comes up with this perfect sequence. It’s awesome. It works perfectly in the movie.

And so what was his process for coming up with this perfect five note sequence? He didn’t sit and meditate until inspiration from God struck him from heaven while he was sitting there. No, he wrote down dozens of five note sequences and then sat down and went through all of them with Steven Spielberg and picked the one that worked best. So get your reps in. Quantity leads to quality.

While “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is nearly 50 years old, it was far from being his first work as he had composed somewhere around 40 movies by that point. This wasn’t some kind messing around with ideas, this was a genius that knew that producing a ton of ideas is what would lead to the breakthrough.

That’s a big reason why I write every day. I know that most of these posts aren’t amazing (and I thank you for taking the time to read anyhow), but I know that through doing these reps I’m more likely to increase my clarity of thought and produce good content more and more often.

Thrash early, not late

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In most projects, you need to get a handful of people involved to get their input. The more you can front-load that input, the more smoothly things will go.

As shared by Seth Godin in his book “Linchpin“:

“The point of getting everyone involved early is simple: thrash late and you won’t ship. Thrash late and you introduce bugs. Professional creators thrash early. The closer the project gets to completion, the fewer people see it and the fewer changes are permitted.”

We’ve all been part of a project that gets way too many people involved at the end, and the final 5% of the project takes as long as the first 95% did.

Instead, invite everyone in early for ideas and perspectives. This gives all stakeholders a chance to give their input, and can help push the project in the right direction. Then, as things go on, you can reduce the amount of input in the subsequent steps.

It’s similar to what I tell clients about our website design process; when we show off the initial design concept it’s intentionally a bit anticlimactic. There’s no big “wow”, but rather a confident “yes”. Our designer is amazingly good, but there shouldn’t be surprises at that point. We’ve thrashed early, working through messaging and personas, then visual branding, into content strategy and wireframes, and the design is simply the culmination of that work. The early thrashing leads to smooth results down the road, and ultimately leads to a project that launches on time.

By the end of a project there should be no thrashing left to be done, and all parties are better off for it.

The Sunday Summary: Anecdotes, artists, interruptions, and shorter books

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In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week.

Mon, January 6: Anecdotes vs Statistics
“In issues of public health, how loudly do we hear anecdotal stories compared to how clearly are we presented with verifiable and relevant statistics?”

Tue, January 7: Where do your customers form their opinions?
Google shouldn’t be ignored, but the data you see for traffic coming to your site likely isn’t really showing what leads people to find you in the first place.

Wed, January 8: Your prospects aren’t thinking about you
I tell all my clients, “Unless you work for Apple, none of your prospects wake up thinking about you.”

Thu, January 9: Are you really an artist?
If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

Fri, January 10: You should interrupt others, but just a little bit
Interruptions are often rude, but “collaborative overlapping” can be a good thing, and it’s a fine line between the two.

Sat, January 11: Books will get shorter, but not for the reason you think
Why don’t I train an LLM to distribute my knowledge instead of forcing people to read a book? So do you think there are going to be authors in the long run? Because a book is not that efficient a way to pass information.

I hope you found some value in this. If you ever have questions, ideas, or disagreements regarding anything I write, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Books will get shorter, but not for the reason you think

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I suspect that in the coming years, the length of books (particularly non-fiction) will become noticeably shorter. Not all books, of course, but many of them.

This isn’t due to diminishing concentration or attention spans (which aren’t actually diminishing), but due to better ways of learning.

In a recent podcast by Guy Kawasaki on his Remarkable People show, he interviewed AI expert Terry Sejnowski and they got into the topic of what an author is really trying to do. They lead with the story of Kodak and how they invented the digital camera but didn’t do anything with it because they were in the “chemical” business instead of the “capturing memories” business. Here’s what they had to say:

If they had repositioned their brains, they would’ve figured out “We preserve memories, it’s better to do it digitally than chemically.” So now as an author, and you’re also an author, I think, what is my business? Is it chemicals? Is it writing books, or is it the dissemination of information?

And if I zoom out, and I say it’s dissemination of information, why am I writing books? Why don’t I train an LLM to distribute my knowledge instead of forcing people to read a book? So do you think there are going to be authors in the long run? Because a book is not that efficient a way to pass information.

I read quite a few books and I don’t plan to slow down, but they’re correct that books are not really a very efficient way to pass information. With tools like Anki, Readwise, Blinkist and Shortform, not to mention YouTube and AI tools, books can often be a little long-winded.

Further, many books are far too long for bad reasons (often just to “feel substantial”), and I appreciate books that get the point in a more efficient manner.

For example, one book I plan to read soon is “Smart Brevity“, which covers this very topic, and I’ll likely have more thoughts in this area when I finish that one. True to the name, the book is only 3 hours on audible, so it indeed seems like it will get to the point.

Do you think the typical book will get shorter in the coming years?

You should interrupt others, but just a little bit

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I kind of enjoy when I’m reading a book and it seems to contradict what I’ve read in another book. This happened recently while reading “The JOLT Effect“, followed by “The Charisma Myth“. Both are great books, but they seem to offer competing advice about interrupting others.

From the JOLT Effect and some thoughts on “cooperative overlapping”:

This term was coined by Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen, who explains that “cooperative overlapping occurs when the listener starts talking along with the speaker, not to cut them off but rather to validate or show they’re engaged in what the other person is saying.” Tannen says another way to think about cooperative overlapping is “enthusiastic listenership” or “participatory listenership.” Others have described this technique as communicating with somebody as opposed to at somebody, and that not cooperatively overlapping can have the unintended consequence of making the other person feel alone.

Then, from The Charisma Myth:

Good listeners know never, ever to interrupt—not even if the impulse to do so comes from excitement about something the other person just said. No matter how congratulatory and warm your input, it will always result in their feeling at least a twinge of resentment or frustration at not having been allowed to complete their sentence. One of my clients told me: “This one practice alone is worth its weight gold. To stop interrupting others could be the single most important skill I’ve learned from working with you.”

So you have one book saying “here is how to interrupt” and the other saying to “never, ever interrupt”. However, I think they’re both right.

The JOLT Effect isn’t really suggesting that you interrupt, and more just go along with them. As they say above, “not to cut them off”, which is exactly what The Charisma Myth encourages.

I’ve been thinking about both of those in recent conversations with folks, but it seems that they’re on the same page so I’ll keep trying to hone my skill of “cooperative overlapping” without actually interrupting what the other person is saying.

Are you really an artist?

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I’ve often found that the strongest people in any area tend to have a bit of imposter syndrome, as it keeps them constantly pushing to improve.

Related, I’ve heard it said about those that ask questions such as “am I a good mother?” — if you care enough to ask, you almost certainly are.

In his book “The War of Art“, Steven Pressfield took a similar approach when talking about writers and artists, saying:

If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

Constantly being “scared to death” isn’t a good way to live, but leaving a bit of doubt about your skills will always push you to be better. I always try to look up to those that are smarter than me, as it both helps improve my skills (by learning from them) as well as keep me humble and striving for more.

Your prospects aren’t thinking about you

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It’s fun to think that our ideal clients are out there thinking about us and wanting to work with us, but it almost certainly isn’t true.

In her book “The Revenue Engine“, Kara Smith Brown put it simply:

I tell all my clients, “Unless you work for Apple, none of your prospects wake up thinking about you.”

This is why it’s so important to stay in front of them. Share compelling content on social media. Reach out appropriately via email. Rank well in Google.

They don’t wake up thinking about you, but you can certainly take steps to make sure you show up during their day so that they’ll think about you when the need arises.

Where do your customers form their opinions?

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Google is increasingly becoming a place where people go to find a specific website or company, but not where their journey really begins — it’s more often where their journey ends. However, the data can make this seem a little confusing.

As shared by Rand Fishkin, this chart shows which sites drive the most traffic on the web:

Looking at that, it seems that you should really be investing in getting more traffic from Google. However, that chart is a bit misleading because it simply shows where people come from, but not what motivated the words in their search.

Rand goes on to share this chart, which shows where people spend their time online:

You can see that search is just a tiny piece of that (10.25%). Your customers are on those other sites, where they learn about you and your industry, read reviews, talk with others, and form their opinion on next steps. Once that opinion is formed, they often head to Google to navigate to your website (or the site of your competitor).

Google shouldn’t be ignored, but the data you see for traffic coming to your site likely isn’t really showing what leads people to find you in the first place.

Anecdotes vs Statistics

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Every now and then you hear a story of someone who was killed in a car accident because they were wearing a seatbelt. Perhaps the car went into the water, or caught on fire, and the person couldn’t escape in time because of the seatbelt. It’s awful, and if it happens to someone you know it can really make an impact on your beliefs.

The problem is when you use that horrible anecdote to convince others not to wear their seatbelt, despite decades of data showing that seatbelts make you orders of magnitude safer in an accident.

This issue of anecdotes goes far beyond seatbelts and can be equally problematic in other areas such as public health (particularly vaccines) and nutrition.

In a recent blog post from Seth Godin, he shared:

In issues of public health, how loudly do we hear anecdotal stories compared to how clearly are we presented with verifiable and relevant statistics?

Anecdotes can be very powerful, especially if they’re related to a situation with a family member or close friend, but keeping your eye on the statistics will almost certainly lead to better outcomes for everyone.