Repetition is the foundation of clarity of thought

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

In recently listening to the Founders episode on Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue for the last 37 years, they shared a simple sentence that tied together a number of ideas I’ve had.

The sentence was simply “repetition is the foundation of clarity of thought“.

One of my early posts in my daily blogging streak was about the very idea of improving my clarity of thought. Most of history’s greatest entrepreneurs were known for their incredibly clear thinking, and that’s something that many of us aspire to. Those entrepreneurs all love to read, but the ability to think clearly involves making use of that reading and knowledge to shape your thoughts.

The related piece is repetition, which is something that I’ve always struggled 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.

I first saw the fault in myself when I was leading a middle school Bible study class 20 years ago. I had the lesson plan, but I’d be done in 10 minutes of the 60 minute class as I’d simply share each point in the lesson and move on. Of course, none of the students would remember it from the single point; it takes stories and parallels and repetition to bring it home.

The same is true for us. Robert Carnes encourages us to “keep sharing” from a post of mine a few years ago, and I gave a few more tips (mostly for my own benefit) earlier this year.

Clarity of thought is still something I will continue to strive for, and repetition is one great way to help get there.

They all love to read

by 2 Comments

Reading Time: 2 minutes

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?

What books do you like?

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

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.

Accumulating little notes

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I recently shared the question of whether meta work is worth the effort. It’s certainly situational, but I’m finding that it often can pay off quite well in the long run.

In that previous post, part of the thought was around tracking books from lists that people suggest. Similar to the list that I shared last time, I’ve started adding the books mentioned in the new podcast from Adam Walker and Jeff Hilimire called “Who as time to read?” to my database as well.

I respect the opinions of those two guys quite a lot, so adding those insights into Obsidian seemed like a wise thing to do. After each episode, I pull their list of books and add them all in. I’ve read some of them previously, I plan to read others, and I plan to skip some of them, but it’s helpful to put all of them in there for reference.

People

To back up a bit, I add every person that I come across in meetings and readings into Obsidian, leading to having around 3,500 people in my Obsidian database so far. In adding them, I’ve found it best to keep it simple — friends, authors, athletes, astronauts and everyone else all go into the same bucket. It’s similar to the idea of Multiplexity that I keep for my phone contact list; one big group is easier than trying to split things up.

Jeff Hilimire is a great example of that. I know him personally, so he might be a “friend”. He’s also runs a great agency, so he’s “business”. He also hosts a podcast (and has been on mine), so “podcaster” could work. He also has written a handful of books, so “author” would be accurate as well. At the end of the day, trying to put him in a single bucket would be impossible, so he’s in the same list with my coworkers, friends, Abraham Lincoln, Seth Godin, and Michael Jordan. People are people.

Books

I do the same with books. If a book gets mentioned in my notes, it gets a note all to itself for the benefit of future cross-linking. For example, “The War of Art” mentions Homer’s “The Odyssey”, so I added that book in there. It’s just a stub of a note right now, but maybe it’ll grow over time.

Looking at “The War of Art”, it started as a stub note years ago when Seth Godin mentioned it in a post and also referenced it in his book “The Practice“. It later showed up in a list of “100 books you need to read before you die“. I’ve since read the book, and I just recorded a podcast that will be published on Stacking Knowledge in the coming weeks. Over the years, that simple note has become quite robust.

Perhaps “The Odyssey” will stay as a mostly empty note forever, or maybe it’ll someday be built out in a huge note with many references and ideas. I can’t see the future, so I’m finding it helpful to just add every book that I come across in there and see where things go, and save myself the slight mental cost of determining what should go in there and what shouldn’t.

Those little notes can really add up, and I love it!

Is the meta work worth it?

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

One of the big challenges of productivity is determining what meta work (the work around your work) is worth your time. For me, a big one is playing with productivity tools; while I might find some gains in new tools, I also tend to spend a lot of time tinkering with them. I internally consider this a mild form of entertainment as a way to justify it, but it’s likely not worth the time I put in.

Two other big ones stand out, and I have opposing stances on them.

Time tracking

With many creative agencies, the question of “time tracking or not” is a big one. For us, we’re going with “not”. The data gleaned from time tracking can be fantastic, but the effort of tracking that time can be a killer.

That said, I have two exceptions:

  1. Occasionally we’ll track time on a specific project just to make sure that we’re in the range that we expect. The challenge is that if we’re not in the habit of tracking, much of the time can slip through.
  2. I’ll sometimes track my time for a few days, like I shared in this example. It can be helpful to see where my time really goes.

Overall, though, I consider time tracking to be meta work that isn’t worth the effort.

Notes

This post came to mind when I saw this list of “The Top 20 Business Books” as compiled by Jason and Julie at Blumer CPAs. My initial thought was to add it to Obsidian to have as a reference for future books to read. Most of the books were already in my system (some read, some not), but there were a few new ones. All told, I spent about 15 minutes going through and adding the new ones and then marking them up with a bit more data for future sorting (author name, book length, tagline, etc).

This was a bit of meta work that may or may not be worth the effort.

As a general rule, I add every book that I come across into Obsidian, as I find increasing value in that over time. In the case of lists like this, it gives me another data point on most of those books (yet another reason to read them or not), as well as giving me a few more books in the list. I could be more discerning, but it’s easier just to add them all instead of thinking “well, should I add this one, or maybe not, or I guess I should…“, similar to how I handle my contact list.

This is meta work that most people choose not to do, but I find it valuable over time. Months from now when I’m looking for a book to read, these are in my system along with the note of why it’s in there (“From the list that Jason and Julie published”). I find that valuable, but you may find it to be too time-consuming to do that.

We both may be right.

When it comes to this kind of stuff, there is no perfect answer. I know other agencies that track their time and do a fantastic job of it, and I know people that read far more than I do without an elaborate note-taking system. There’s no one answer, but it’s always wise to be considering whether the meta work is worth your time, or if you should skip it and just get down to the real work instead.

Benjamin Franklin’s self-doubt led to the signing of the Constitution

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

On September 17, 1787, Benjamin Franklin gave a speech at the Constitutional Convention which led to the signing of the Constitution. Franklin wasn’t convinced that the document was perfect, but he also knew that maybe he was wrong and he encouraged everyone to move forward. Here’s part of what he said:

“I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present, but sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For having lived long, I have experienced many Instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.“

Later in the talk he encouraged others to do the same:

“On the whole, sir, I cannot help expressing a wish, that every member of the convention, who may still have objections to it, would with me on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.“

He ultimately decided a few things:

  • He didn’t fully approve it, but knew that his judgement might be poor.
  • He wanted to respect the judgement of others.
  • He encouraged others to approve it, even if they had some objections.

He knew that they’d never get to a point where everyone agreed on every word of the document, so he encouraged everyone to move forward to at least get it published.

As I’ve said before, it can be good to doubt yourself. My previous posts were about using self-doubt to improve your knowledge, but Franklin shows it can also be good to help push things forward. He knew that his opinions on the document could potentially be mistaken, and it was good enough that it was worth moving forward instead of just letting everyone argue about it even longer.

237 years later, he seems he got it right.

Movie tickets are sunk costs

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

The idea of a “sunk cost” has always been interesting to me. I understand it rather well, but it often feels counter-intuitive. As a result, I love finding new ways to explain it to help me widen my understanding.

If you’re not familiar with the term, Wikipedia defines it as “a cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered.“

In other words, if you can’t get your time or money back, then don’t factor that into your decision of whether to keep going down the path you’re on. Seth Godin puts it this way:

“The thing you earned, that you depend on, that was hard to do–it’s a gift from your former self. Just because you have a law degree, a travel agency or the ability to do calligraphy in Cyrillic doesn’t mean that your future self is obligated to accept that gift.“

You should treat things as a gift from your past self, knowing that it’s your decision to accept or reject that gift, based on your current circumstances.

In his book “The Personal MBA“, Josh Kaufman offers up this analogy:

For example, if you purchase a movie ticket, you have the ability to occupy a seat in the theater, but you don’t have to if a better opportunity presents itself. When you purchase the ticket, all you’re purchasing is the right to exercise the Option to see the movie at the time specified—nothing more.

Understood properly, sunk costs can free you from things you feel like you “need” to do. If you have tickets to a show but the weather is bad and you’re feeling sick, you don’t need to go. The common thought is “I can’t waste the $25 that I spent on these tickets”, but the $25 is gone either way. You have two options:

  • The $25 is gone, and you can drag your sick self out in the weather and be miserable.
  • The $25 is gone, and you can stay home, stay warm, and get some rest.

It’s a shame to waste $25 like that, but that’s irrelevant to the decision at hand. This can apply to other things like hiring (“We need to let her go, but we’ve put so much effort into training her”) or reading (“This book is awful, but I’ve already put three hours into it”), but at the end of the day you just need to decide whether to accept the gift from your former self or not, and many times turning it down is the best thing you can do.

Multiplexity

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I know a lot of people through my personal life and a lot of people through my work life, but there’s an important third group — people that are in both. In the book “Friend of Friend“, author David Burkus calls this “multiplexity”. He explains:

“While we may want to categorize people into just work and personal buckets, real social networks do not seem to operate that way. And that is to our benefit. Research shows that not only does multiplexity help us become more aware of real-life opportunities, but it enhances our performance on the job—and can even enhance the performance of an entire organization.”

Contacts

I first noticed this a long time ago when trying to sort out my contact list and realized that a lot of people couldn’t be put into a single bucket. Eventually I decided that I just wanted one list of contacts, and to have it sync between my personal and business accounts. I shared this method back in 2017, but these days I essentially just use ContactsPlus to handle it.

With ContactsPlus, anyone in my personal contacts gets synced to my G Suite contacts and vice-versa. They include some other features for cleaning up the contact list, but my main concern is just keeping them synced. As a general rule, I add everyone I meet into my contacts so that if I get an inbound call I almost always know who it is. Space isn’t a concern, so I load it up!

As of now I have around 6,500 contacts in there; I certainly don’t know/remember everyone, but it’s nice to have those old ones in there just in case they reach out. I mean, why not?

Obsidian

I have a similar approach with Obsidian for my notes. Within Obsidian you can create different “vaults” for different purposes, and keep your notes completely separate. Rather than do that, I just keep all of my notes in a single vault, because too many are difficult to categorize. I mentioned this a few years ago when showing the content from one note that contained:

  • A business-related person
  • A quote from a book
  • A quote from Zig Ziglar
  • A reference to a Bible verse

I had tried to keep things in separate vaults, some of those would have been split out. Instead, I can just keep them all in one place and reference around as needed.

Multiplexity can create a mess if you’re not careful, but I think choosing that route in many aspects of life is likely the best way to go.

Change your defaults

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

One of the biggest problems people face on their phones is getting sucked into a bout of “doomscrolling” — just mindlessly going through never-ending social media feeds. Most of us open social media apps with a bit of purpose in mind, but it’s easy to get sucked into the feed for longer than we intended.

As I’ve been playing with different launchers for my phone, the one thing that has helped a lot is keeping the social media apps tucked away. They’re easy enough to get to if I want them, but they’re not on my home screen so I never notice them just sitting there. Out of sight, out of mind. Robert takes it even further and has zero apps on his home screen and accesses everything from the main app drawer. This takes intention to a whole new level and is a great way to do things.

I keep a few icons on my home screen, but they’re all either apps with a specific purpose (like Google Maps or Beeper) or else they’re apps that I’m happy to “waste” some time using, like Readwise or Anki. If I’m bored in a waiting room or something, spending time in those apps is far better than heading into Facebook or Instagram.

I still keep the social media apps on my phone, and certainly use them from time to time, but by making other apps my default time-killers it really helps to keep things in check.

Writing down an idea feels like a detour

by Leave a Comment

Reading Time: < 1 minute

At first glance, writing down ideas or thoughts seems like a waste of time. If you have an idea, act on it. If you have something to do, do it!

When it comes to to-do lists, we’ve all learned the value of them (and the satisfaction of crossing off items), and the same should be true of other ideas that come to mind. In his book “How to Take Smart Notes“, author Sonke Ahrens says:

“And while writing down an idea feels like a detour, extra time spent, not writing it down is the real waste of time, as it renders most of what we read as ineffectual.”

Not only is note taking not “a detour”, but it’s essential. I’ve mentioned many times on here my disappointment with my past self for not taking adequate notes from previous books I’ve read (most anything before 2020 or so), leading to me saying things like “Yes, I read that book. I remember thinking that it was great, but I can’t really tell you much about it.”. There’s not much value there.

If you’re reading for pleasure, then you should absolutely kick back and just enjoy the ride. However, if you’re reading to help make a change in your life, the reading will be largely ineffectual if notes and processes don’t go along with it.

Those processes are up to you to figure out (and I’ve shared many on this blog that you’re free to steal), but if you have some great tips please leave them in the comments below.