MNTS #31
MNTS #31
[Week 50/ Year 2023] Accelerated Expertise, We, Lindy Investing, Radical Candor,
Mainly, Notes To Self - my weekly attempt to compress everything noteworthy I read, watched, listened to, and discovered during the past week.
Reading
Accelerated Expertise Training for High Proficiency in a Complex World - this one is pretty dry and dense, and I’m only about 50 pages in, but I’m very interested in going deeper into the science of accelerating expertise. I’ll be doing a full write-up on this one. Lots to unpack. Lia Di Bello, who was featured in last week's podcast recommendation, is one of several authors who contributed to the text.
What “you” and “we” say about me: How small shifts in language reveal and empower fundamental shifts in perspective - It recently came to my attention that I use the first-person plural pronoun “we” when engaging in self-talk. This is apparently quite common and does have beneficial psychological effects.
Lindy Effect in Investing by Market Sentiment
Jeff Bezos was once asked how Amazon became so successful, and his response gives us an insight into what it takes to build companies that last generations.
I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' [or] 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.' Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now.
Listening
This caught my attention because I’ve had this book in the to-be-read stack for a while now, and I thought this interview might serve as inspiration to either finally read it or be enough for me to grok the concepts and move on. The latter turned out to be the case. I’m a big feedback guy. Once, I even told my boss to “buy a new fucking shirt” after she had worn the same one on video calls several days in a row. I said it in jest, but it stood out to her as valuable because no one else would have mentioned it. I also hope and wish for people to give me that type of feedback. I genuinely want to be called out for blindspots or just plain sloppiness. My main takeaway from the podcast is simply not to ask people, “Do you have any feedback?” (I’m definitely guilty of this) but to come up with your own unique question that is more sincere. Scott uses the example, “What could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?” I don’t love that question, but I do like the concept and will be crafting a more pointed and authentic question to use when soliciting feedback.
Random
Found that good winter sun.
Until next week.
Stay spirited, stay resilient.
Andrew