Unique shows for everyone

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I recently watched the episode of “Black Mirror” on Netflix titled “Joan is Awful” and it opened up some interesting conversations.

The quick summary of the episode is that Joan comes home from work one day, fires up “Streamberry” (a spoof of Netflix) and discovers there is a new show featuring her life from that very day (starring Salma Hayek), and everyone is watching it. It’s quite embarrassing for her and leads to a variety of rough outcomes.

As the episode progresses, we find that her show was created using AI, which is how they were able to produce full episodes in near real-time. The episode gets into legal matters about using a person in a show like that (“you agreed to it in the terms of service”) and their use of Hayek’s likeness in AI, but that angle isn’t my concern for now. The more pressing matter, and one that we’ll see relatively soon, is AI-generated shows and movies that are custom-made for each of us.

Netflix and other services know a ton about us. We’re not far from the point where Netflix could have an idea for a show, but then customize it to feature things that would keep us individually more entertained. Perhaps they swap in local sports teams for each user, customize character accents, set things in homes and cars that are more appealing, etc. They could do a lot to make every one of us see a different version of the “same” show, so where does that lead?

Taking it further, they could create 100% custom programming for users. Is there a book that you wish was a movie? Done!

Engagement?

This would likely increase one kind of engagement, but decrease another. People would likely be more engaged with the super-customized shows, at least for a while, but would be less able to share thoughts with their friends because they all saw different shows.

We’re seeing that a bit already simply due to the huge volume of programming that’s available. Gone are the days of talking to folks about the show last night (Seinfeld, ER, Lost, M*A*S*H, etc) that “everyone” watched the night before. With this potential AI-generated future, we go even further in that direction.

Ultimately, no one knows. I encourage you to watch the “Jane is Awful” episode of Black Mirror if you have Netflix; it has some clearly unrealistic aspects to it, but there are pieces that just might come true before too long.

Of course other people can change us

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We hear a lot about how “no one ever changed their mind because of a Facebook post”, something that I’ve disagreed with for years. While it’s very unlikely that a Facebook post will change my mind, if someone that I trust and respect posts something contrary to my beliefs, I will dig in to understand their viewpoint. Perhaps I’ll change my mind and be less wrong than I was before. Win!

Many people still don’t think it’s possible, but it’s clear that other people can quickly change how we think. From the book “Big Potential“:

“I find it so odd when people nod vigorously at the idea that you cannot change other people— and yet five minutes later talk about the toxic effect of negative people in their lives or workplaces. If your day can be ruined by an angry email from a client, a rude encounter with a neighbor, or a bad interaction with your manager, why is the opposite not equally true? Why can’t the interactions with the positive people in your life make your day better and the choice to flourish easier?”

They weren’t talking as much about changing ideas as they were about changing attitudes, and I love it! The author also shares a great example of exactly how to do that, and it’s one that hit pretty close me (because I’m bad about doing this). He says:

As the brilliant researcher who also happens to be my wife suggested in Broadcasting Happiness, you can set the tone by creating a “power lead” to short-circuit a negative encounter. Try not to start your phone calls with “I’m so swamped” or “What a week. Is it Friday yet?” Instead, start with a breath and say “It’s great to talk to you,” or “I’m so excited about our work together.”

Just that bit of positivity can change an entire conversation. People can change you, but you can also change them, so efforts to push things in a positive direction can be awesome for everyone.

Don’t ignore the shady marketers

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I was hanging out with a friend a few weeks ago when they got an unknown call on their cell phone. With a few minutes of free time, I encouraged them to answer it to see what happened. It was a local lawyer that had seen a public record of them being in a recent (very minor) car accident, and was pushing to hear of ailments (“are you sure your neck doesn’t hurt a tiny bit?“).

My friend should have used some very unkind words with this cold-calling ambulance chaser, but instead they just gave an overly polite “No thank you”. I’m all about defaulting to kindness, but people who push spammy interruptions deserve no kindness for their acts.

In a recent episode of his “Akimbo” podcast, Seth Godin shared this excellent sentiment:

“And you will go back to business as usual because the ratchet of capitalism is inexorable. Over and over, it turns, usually in one direction, and it’s not the direction toward, I see you as a human, I treat you with respect and dignity, and you in return do the same for me. No, we’re in such a hurry to save a minute or save a dollar. We’re in such a hurry to click on that thing we want, even if we know that we are rewarding a marketer who is doing something we don’t approve of, that we keep doing it.”

Don’t reward marketers that do things that you don’t approve of. Really, any cold outreach is unacceptable and should be treated as such. Mark cold email as spam, disconnect from anyone that sends a cold DM on social media, and hang up on anyone that cold calls.

This stuff doesn’t scale, and both the small and large issues should be called out. If you think something might be spam, it almost certainly is and spammers don’t deserve to be treated nicely.

Seth has also said that “the people you most want to engage with don’t want to be hustled“, and that’s a perfect way to put it. There are great ways to market to your desired audience, but don’t hustle them — engage with them.

Nick Saban didn’t give out game balls

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One of the best things that Nick Saban did while coaching the University of Alabama football team was promote an unbelievable amount of team over individual. While they certainly had a ton of amazing individual athletes on his teams that have gone on to great success in the NFL, Saban made sure the focus was always team first.

As part of that focus, Saban never gave out a “game ball” to the best player on his team after each game. The book “Big Potential” explains more:

Similarly, Nick Saban, the venerated head coach of the University of Alabama’s perennially championship-winning football team, doesn’t buy into the tradition of handing out game balls to MVPs, because he believes that singling out players for individual achievements goes against his winning objective; for him, success is all about the team’s win, not one superstar’s stats.

While it doesn’t surprise me in retrospect, I never knew that was a thing that any team did; I assumed they all gave out game balls. It’s somewhat like the idea of “We think that’s stupid” that I shared yesterday; don’t just do what others do for no reason. Nick clearly knew that most teams gave out a game ball every week, but he thought that was a stupid way to put individuals above the team as a whole, so he simply didn’t do it.

His results speak for themselves.

We think that’s stupid

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Recently the “Art of Investing” podcast had the guys from the “Acquired” podcast on their show to discuss how Acquired has grown to be what it is (roughly 300,000 downloads per episode).

There were a lot of great moments in the show, but one that stood out was when Ben and David were talking about the early days of Acquired and how they knew they wanted to work together:

“I really am just vibing with this person because we’re speaking the language. We both feel like even though others in our industry act this way and say these things, we think that’s stupid.”

Over the years, they’ve been pressured to do things “like everyone else” such as publishing more often, or covering different types of companies. They’ve chosen to stay the path because they think some of those things are “stupid”.

Similar to Ali and my start at GreenMellen, these guys found themselves together and were fortunate to already be on the same page about a lot of things. We find things like putting our brand on client websites and forcing long-term contracts to be stupid. Specifically, to steal from Ben and David again, “we both feel like even though others in our industry act this way and say these things, we think that’s stupid.“

Podcasts can publish at different intervals and cover different industries, and none are necessarily wrong. However, finding what works for you and not just blindly following everyone else can leave you in a very powerful position.

I encourage you to listen to that full episode from them to learn more.

What do you like that other people find tedious?

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Last week I mentioned a simple question from David Senra that asked “what are you good at that other people find difficult?“. He had another thought in that same show that I thought was even more interesting, where he said:

“One sign that you’re suited for some kind of work is when you like even the parts that other people find tedious.”

To most of us, his work indeed feels tedious. He reads more than pretty much anyone else around, and he does it day after day after day, and then records and edits very long shows. He’s done this week after week after week for years. To him, though, it’s not tedious at all because he enjoys it so much.

During that part of the episode he also asked the question “how many books do you think people read?”, and the answer is likely much lower than you think. It’s hard to find consistent data on it, but this survey from Gallup a few years ago shows the slowly declining trend. With all of the other entertainment options that we have, reading is sliding down the list. Despite that, David reads an incredible amount, to the point that most people would consider it tedious.

What do you like to do that others find tedious? Some may enjoy reading legal briefs to try to find the tiny piece that turns the case, or others may enjoy spending all day splicing together video clips to make magic on the screen. There are many roles that involve doing the same type of work over and over, and if you can find the one that doesn’t feel tedious to you it’s a fantastic place to be.

The Sunday Summary: Social media, repetition, accurate facts, and Shortform for long 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, August 26: Social media is an empty vessel
“TikTok’s a super empty vessel. Their business is very simple: we are going to build an algorithm that only give you more of what you’ve shown us you want. Period.”

Tue, August 27: What are you good at that other people find difficult?
“There is something that everybody in here is good at that other people think is difficult. And you’re like, why do other people think it’s difficult?”

Wed, August 28: Repetition is the foundation of clarity of thought
Repetition is something that I struggle with. I’ve long felt that you should get your idea out there and then move on to the next, but I know that to be faulty.

Thu, August 29: Accurate facts that mislead
It’s tricky in today’s world because so many of the stats you see (particularly on places like social media) are completely made up. Therefore, if you find data that is verifiably accurate, you feel like you need to reach the conclusion shared with the data. Or maybe not.

Fri, August 30: Shortform for long books
I still like Blinkist for book summaries, but Shortform (which is ironically 4-6x longer) is proving to be a better fit in most cases.

Sat, August 31: Ego is slang for insecurity
“Ego is slang for insecurity, and I think a lot of people mix up confidence with ego. Confidence is humility, and ego is insecurity. You can be confident and humble, but being insecure and humble is much harder to contain in a human.“

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.

Ego is slang for insecurity

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A recent podcast from Gary Vaynerchuk brought out a quick slew of comparisons. I had to listen a few times to get them straight, but here’s what he said:

“Ego is slang for insecurity, and I think a lot of people mix up confidence with ego. Confidence is humility, and ego is insecurity. You can be confident and humble, but being insecure and humble is much harder to contain in a human.“

To break down his thoughts, we have:

  • Ego = insecurity.
  • Confidence = humility.
  • Being insecure and humble is hard to do.
  • Therefore, having an ego and being confident is hard to do.

It all makes sense until the final conclusion where it gets a little tricky. Having an ego and being confident is hard to do? It feels like people do that a lot.

His real comparison is simply confidence versus ego. If we see someone with one of those traits, we often assume the other as well, but maybe that’s not the case. If ego comes from insecurity and confidence comes from a place of humility, they’re quite different things.

Personally, I strive to have confidence but I don’t strive to have an ego, so I guess that checks out.

What do you think? Do you think a big ego is someone hiding their insecurity, and that being confident is showing humility?

Shortform for long books

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I’ve been using Blinkist for some book summaries for a few years now, and it’s great! However, I’m noticing a growing problem in the gap between long books and Blinkist, in that the “Blinks” just aren’t long enough to really share the heart of the book.

Blinkist and most related platforms are proud of the fact that they give you “15 minute summaries”. Those are a fantastic way to get an overview of a book, but then they leave a bit gap between that 15 minute summary and the full ~10 hours of reading.

Algorithms to Live By

A great example is the book Algorithms to Live By. I was listening to an episode of the “Who has time to read?” podcast, and this book came up. I don’t remember the exact wording, but their thought was “it’s a great book, but could have been 25% the length“. If you listen to that book on Audible, it’s just shy of 12 hours long.

Enter Shortform. It’s similar to Blinkist, but they give much more in-depth summaries. In the case of Algorithms to Live By, the summary was perhaps 60-90 minutes; far more detailed than Blinkist, but it saved me over 10 hours of reading time from the unnecessarily long book. This certainly has left me with a few blind spots that would have been covered in reading the full book, but the dense 60-90 minutes covered a lot of ground.

There are three other things that I like about Shortform when compared to Blinkist:

  • The summaries include links. They’re not afraid to link out to studies they cite or other articles. That alone has given me more content to store in Readwise Reader when I have a chance.
  • They cite other books. They often will share ideas and contradictions from other books (“This point from the authors is contradicted in this other book, where they say x“). They clearly have put in a lot of work to find those connections.
  • They integrate highlights with Readwise. Blinkist allows highlights, but they’re fairly rudimentary. With Shortform, my highlights sync across devices and I even have them automatically feeding into my Readwise Daily Review.

There’s still one shortcoming, but it may be an unavoidable copyright issue; I wish they’d include more actual quotes from the book inside the summary. The way they summarize the ideas is very well done, but a bit of “And the authors said this quote…” would be great. I suspect that copyright laws likely make that impossible.

All told, I encourage you to give it a shot. I still may use Blinkist for quick reviews, but so far Shortform is looking like an excellent way to digest those huge books that just aren’t worth the hours to get through.

Accurate facts that mislead

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I’ve always been fascinated by accurate stats that can be misleading.

For example, Simpson’s Paradox explains why Reggie Miller was more accurate than Larry Bird in both three-point shots and two-point shots, but Bird was more accurate when you combine them.

Or you have the fact that Chick-Fil-A is mathematically the fastest drive-thru restaurant, but they’re also mathematically the slowest, and both stats are accurate (and from the same study).

Annie Duke recently shared a similar idea where people used data to show that we’re all getting dumber. Specifically that starting in 1935, Nobel winners by birth year have been steadily dropping. In this case, though, there isn’t a counter-stat to show the other side, but rather it’s just a misleading interpretation of the data. Here’s the chart:

However, Annie sums it up nicely:

Why is the interpretation that people are getting dumber so unfounded here? Because there is an obvious alternative explanation for this seeming disappearance of people of Nobel-Prize-level intelligence: How old are Nobel Prize winners?

Old.

It’s tricky in today’s world because so many of the stats you see (particularly on places like social media) are completely made up. Therefore, if you find data that is verifiably accurate, you feel like you need to reach the conclusion shared with the data.

Or maybe not.

It’s not always easy to find the truth within the truth, but it’s always worth the effort. I encourage you to check out Annie’s post for more.