The Sunday Summary: They love to read, power poses, and bad days

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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 12: The evolution of websites
“Websites won’t go away, but they will need to evolve. When humans visit websites, the content could be AI-generated and personalized to the individual user. The era of thousands of web pages is no longer needed.”

Tue, August 13: Reducing attachment
“Attachment. That’s what keeps us from recognizing when our opinions are off the mark and rethinking them. To unlock the joy of being wrong, we need to detach. I’ve learned that two kinds of detachment are especially useful: detaching your present from your past and detaching your opinions from your identity.”

Wed, August 14: Using RSS to sniff out AI
I’ve been using RSS for a few decades, though I’ve eased off a bit from my crazy days in the past. What’s interesting now is that it’s really easy to notice when a site stops posting human-generated content and just lets AI spit it out. I’ve seen this happen in a few ways.

Thu, August 15: They all love to read
I recently decided to dig in to understand the reading habits of some of the most successful people in recent decades, and quickly found one common thread: they all love to read. All of them. I have no doubt that there are exceptions, but my initial digging didn’t find any.

Fri, August 16: Power poses actually generate power
Cuddy’s research paper, “Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance,” published in 2010 by the Association for Psychological Science, showed that various power poses increased testosterone levels by 20 percent and decreased cortisol levels by 25 percent.

Sat, August 17: Bad days are better measures than good ones
“What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.”

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.

Bad days are better measures than good ones

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We’ve all heard the phrase “if you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best“, but it seems to me to be more of a red flag than actual advice. How someone behaves “at their worst” is often what matters the most.

A few years ago I talked about people who are consistently good versus those those are intermittently excellent. Consistently good is almost always better than intermittently excellent. Being excellent from time to time is great, but what does a normal day look like? In the case of today’s post, what does a bad day look like?

In Kevin Kelly’s book “Excellent Advice for Living“, he simply says:

“What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.”

When things go wrong, what do you do? Do you lash out and break things? Do you sulk in a corner? Do you disappear into music, exercise, or alcohol? There are wide degrees of “wrong” that can occur, so most responses are valid during certain events. On a “normal” bad day, though, how do you respond?

I’ve found a good litmus test to be driving. If you drive more than a few miles, you’re going to encounter a “bad driver”; someone that turns without signaling, cuts you off, or is clearly driving way too slow (or way too fast). Most of us encounter drivers like that hundreds of times per year, so how do we respond? There are two edges to this:

  • Honk your horn, wag your middle finger, tailgate, and complain about “idiots”.
  • Slow down, give them room, and arrive safely with your heart rate saying under 100.

Those that choose the latter tend to be the same people that handle bad days better too.

Power poses actually generate power

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I tend to view the world through a very pragmatic lens, seeing things practically rather than theoretically. That’s why this section from Michael Port’s “Steal the Show” struck me so oddly. From the book:

You know how body language affects how others see you, but it may also change how you see yourself. Harvard University social psychologist Amy Cuddy has done extensive research on how “power posing,” standing in a posture of confidence even when you don’t feel confident, can raise testosterone levels while reducing cortisol levels in your brain. In fact, Cuddy’s research paper, “Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance,” published in 2010 by the Association for Psychological Science, showed that various power poses increased testosterone levels by 20 percent and decreased cortisol levels by 25 percent.

When you don’t feel confident, posing in a way to fake that confidence actually increases your testosterone and lowers your cortisol levels — you can trick your body into actually being more confident.

It reminds me of a study from Harvard about placebos. We all know that placebos can work (which is already kind of odd), but studies show that placebos can work even if you know you’re taking a placebo. From the article:

In one study, Kaptchuk looked at people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a common condition that causes abdominal cramping and diarrhea or constipation that can be debilitating for many. Half of the study volunteers were told they were getting an “open-label” placebo and the others got nothing at all. He found that there was a dramatic and significant improvement in the placebo group’s IBS symptoms, even though they were explicitly told they were getting a “sugar pill” without any active medication.

Our bodies can be strange and wonderful. My logical brain would say that of course known placebos can’t work, and faking a “power pose” isn’t really going to help — and I’d be wrong about both of them.

I’m not sure if I’ll be power posing any time soon, but if you see me do it, know that it’s because I’m already quite nervous on the inside and I’m literally working to fake myself out.

They all love to read

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I recently decided to dig in to understand the reading habits of some of the most successful people in recent decades, and quickly found one common thread: they all love to read. All of them. I have no doubt that there are exceptions, but my initial digging didn’t find any.

Here are ten people that I looked up, with some notes on their reading habits and a link to more.

Elon Musk
“Whenever anyone asks how he learned to build rockets, Musk replies that he read books. He doesn’t just read them; he devours them.”
https://fs.blog/elon-musk-book-recommendations/

Jeff Bezos
Is known to be a voracious reader, and often gives books to his top execs to keep them going.
https://fs.blog/jeff-bezos-read-these-books/

Larry Ellison
Often shares lists of books that he recommends, like this list (with his reasons for each book).
https://www.readthistwice.com/person/larry-ellison

Warren Buffett
“I still probably spend five or six hours a day reading,” Buffett says in HBO’s documentary, “Becoming Warren Buffett.” “I like to sit and think. I spend a lot of time doing that and sometimes it is pretty unproductive, but I find it enjoyable to think about business or investment problems.”
http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/becoming-warren-buffett

Mark Cuban
“I read more than three hours almost every day”
https://blogmaverick.com/2011/04/07/shark-tank-success-motivation/

Larry Page
“American billionaire CEO and co-founder of Google Lawrence Edward “Larry” Page loves to read. In his incredibly busy schedule, he takes the time to flip through the traditional hundred pages of his favorite reading material. No more, no less.”
https://huxley.media/en/to-do-something-important-you-have-to-overcome-the-fear-of-failure-google-co-founder-larry-page-s-rules-of-success/

Bill Gates
“Bill Gates’ advice to his younger self is very simple: Pick up a book.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/26/bill-gates-took-solo-think-weeks-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods.html

Mark Zuckerberg
“Reading has given me more perspective on a number of topics — from science to religion, from poverty to prosperity, from health to energy to social justice, from political philosophy to foreign policy, and from history to futuristic fiction. This challenge has been intellectually fulfilling, and I come away with a greater sense of hope and optimism that our society can make greater progress in all of these areas.”
https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/how-do-your-reading-habits-compare-to-elon-musks-mark/305369

Phil Knight
“Phil Knight, the founder of Nike and author of Shoe Dog, spoke of how he was constantly reading books about combat, war strategy, and generalship to help keep him focused during the turbulent days of Nike.”
https://baos.pub/a-professional-military-reading-list-d47647e1739a

Steve Jobs
“While Steve Jobs famously once said that people don’t read anymore, he’s wasn’t one of them. The innovator, salesman and tech and marketing visionary was also a prolific reader with a penchant for poetry, LSD, Bauhaus and Zen Buddhism.”
https://radicalreads.com/steve-jobs-favorite-books/

I’ve noticed the same in my own life. Those around me that I look up to are almost all very heavy readers, most of whom read considerably more than I do.

Learning from your mistakes is wise, but learning from others is far superior.

What have you been reading lately?

Using RSS to sniff out AI

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While RSS has almost completely disappeared from the tech landscape, I’m still a big fan of it. I get the majority of my information via RSS, and it’s fantastic. If you’re not familiar with RSS, it’s essentially a way to subscribe to news sites and blogs. It’s not unlike getting email updates on every new story they publish, but instead of my email inbox they all go into my RSS reader and I catch up when I have time.

I’ve been using RSS for a few decades, though I’ve eased off a bit from my crazy days in the past. What’s interesting now is that it’s really easy to notice when a site stops posting human-generated content and just lets AI spit it out. I’ve seen this happen in a few ways.

First, there is a friend of mine whose blog I’ve followed for years. His posts used to be fairly short and personal, and frankly, often riddled with grammar and spelling errors. I didn’t mind, as I was just glad to hear his thoughts.

His posts had the same tone for many years, and then one day they just flipped. They instantly become 5x longer, with lots of bulleted lists on the page, a super deep vocabulary, and no typos. He absolutely switch to AI, and I was quite disappointed. I stopped following his site because I wanted to hear his thoughts, not just perfect AI stuff.

Second, I’ve seen two other marketing agencies do similar things. In their case, the tell was their pace. They went from a post or two per week up to multiple posts a day. As with the previous example, the posts become much longer, with many more bulleted lists, and vocabulary that seemed way out of context for how they normally spoke.

Sure, they can if they want

To be clear, they’re absolutely able to do this if they want. There’s no laws or restrictions against it, and I support their right to generate content however they want. Perhaps this will benefit them in terms of SEO down the road.

For me, though, I’m just sad. All three of those blogs were ones that I followed for insights and information, and now they’re just full of regurgitated fluff. I’m hopeful that this isn’t a sign of where things are going, but I fear that this is exactly the path that many more companies are going to follow.

I encourage you to fight the urge and keep some humanity in your work.

Reducing attachment

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Something I’ve worked hard at over the last few years is reducing attachment to my opinions. As Daniel Kahneman famously said, “I do enjoy having been wrong, because it means I am now less wrong than I was before.“

The easy example is with mobile phones. I’m an Android guy, but I’d happily switch to iPhone next time if it made more sense to me. I think Android is fantastic, but I avoid being too attached to it.

A bigger concern is with politics; people get too attached to a particular person rather than being willing to vote where it makes the most sense. The most attached I’ve ever been to a politician was a local man named Mike Boyce, and he lived up to it, but I would have quickly turned away if he failed to live up to my expectations for him (which were essentially to be a good and honest man, which he was).

In his book “Think Again“, author Adam Grant explains it like this:

“Attachment. That’s what keeps us from recognizing when our opinions are off the mark and rethinking them. To unlock the joy of being wrong, we need to detach. I’ve learned that two kinds of detachment are especially useful: detaching your present from your past and detaching your opinions from your identity.”

Attachment can leave us tied to bad opinions and bad people. Fight for what you believe, but never get in too deep to be afraid to go the other way.

The evolution of websites

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The internet is changing rapidly, thanks to big shifts in social media and the ongoing wave of AI. Websites have largely remained the same in recent years, staying strong as the home for every business on the internet. I don’t think that will be changing anytime soon, but the nature of the sites themselves may begin to shift.

In a recent blog post, Jeremiah Owyang had some interesting predictions for where AI could be leading, I found two to be quite interesting. The first:

As AI Agents become the dominant entities on the internet, website owners will cater to them by offering Agent APIs that instantly provide information to our AI agents, rather than simulating a human click path as AI agents do today.

In short, if we’re using AI to accomplish tasks (“ChatGPT, how do I solve this problem?”), websites will need to be able provide information to other AI bots and not just humans.

However, I think this will largely be a separate layer. Many websites use APIs today (interfaces to help tools connect together), and those will simply become more robust. The main front-end of a website can remain human-focused, and the APIs can work hard to serve AI bots.

Owyang also said:

Websites won’t go away, but they will need to evolve. When humans visit websites, the content could be AI-generated and personalized to the individual user. The era of thousands of web pages is no longer needed.

This is where the front-end of websites may shift in the coming years. The challenge will be knowing enough about each user to be able to properly customize the page to their needs. This is easy for sites where you log in (the content that you see on Facebook is clearly customized to your needs), but it’s more difficult for open sites.

While it feels like websites have tons of data on us, and some do, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get all of that info summarized. For a website to be able to really customize the content via AI, it’d need to know a lot about you instantly, which is an idea that’s actually fading further away. This is a great thing for privacy, but could lead to some tricky developments in the coming years.

Owyang’s article is quite short, and I encourage you to give it a read. How do you see websites changing in the coming years?

The Sunday Summary: Respect, looking bad, and calendars that never lie

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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 5: Know, respect, trust
“Know, like, trust” –> “Know, respect, trust”?

Tue, August 6: Founders shouldn’t be hireable
“Really, the way I think about a founder is like you’re developing skills that you can’t hire for. You’re gonna hire for everything else, but you shouldn’t be hireable.”

Wed, August 7: Be willing to look bad
“Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.”

Thu, August 8: Your calendar must be telling the truth
“The way I think about my calendar is that it is a tool that has to always be telling me the truth. So if it exists on the calendar, it actually exists. And if it doesn’t exist on the calendar, it doesn’t exist.”

Fri, August 9: What books do you like?
“One of the best ways to find creative people is to ask a simple question. What books do you like? I’ve never met a creative person in my life that didn’t respond with enthusiasm to a question about reading habits.”

Sat, August 10: Never manage people who don’t need to be managed
While I certainly appreciate that processes exist for a reason and there are times to square things back up, when people are working hard to get things done it’s often best to stay out of their way. Ideally, employees should be lead, not managed.

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.

Never manage people who don’t need to be managed

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I often see posts on Reddit that follow a similar path:

  • An employee works hard at their company.
  • They find new ways to do their job more efficiently.
  • Management decides to tighten down on exactly how they should do their job.
  • Things therefore become less efficient, they lose clients, and the employee quits.

While I certainly appreciate that processes exist for a reason and there are times to square things back up, when people are working hard to get things done it’s often best to stay out of their way. Ideally, employees should be lead, not managed.

In the case of GreenMellen, I don’t feel the need to “manage” anyone there (and if anyone from our team is reading this, I hope you agree and you’ll tell me if you don’t). Really, it comes back to a matter of trust. If I trust the people that work for us, it makes life better all the way around. We set parameters on what work needs to be done, values around how we work, and let the team decide how best to do it and when to work on it.

There’s certainly a need for people to be managed in many circumstances, but don’t try to manage those that don’t need to be managed in the first place.

What books do you like?

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Another great segment from the recent “Founders” episode about Sam Walton is related to finding ways to hire creative people. More specifically, how do you determine the creativity of someone during an interview? Here’s a bit from the show:

One of the best ways to find creative people is to ask a simple question.

What books do you like? I’ve never met a creative person in my life that didn’t respond with enthusiasm to a question about reading habits. Which books people read is not as important as the simple fact that they read at all. I’ve known many talented engineers who hated science fiction but loved, say, books on bird watching.

A blatant but often accurate generalization. People who are curious and passionate read. People who are apathetic and indifferent don’t.

I’ve found this to be true in my life as well, but he added an interesting twist about the specific books not mattering, and he’s right. I’ve never thought about it that way, but I find creative people are almost always avid readers, but their choice of books varies wildly. It’s simply that creative people tend to be eager to fill themselves with the creativity of others, and books are a great way to do that.

When you ask someone “what books do you like?”, the answer itself is relatively unimportant, with the real insight simply being the excitement with which the answer is delivered.