MNTS #34
MNTS #34
[Week 1/ Year 2024] Pod Notes, Ben Franklin, What to focus on, Stay SaaSy, Be a 'homie', Bad PowerPoint, Steak, Indestractable, SoCal Iditarod
Mainly, Notes To Self - my weekly attempt to compress everything noteworthy I read, watched, listened to, and discovered during the past week.
New Post - Pod Notes
Reading
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Frankin -
and I have decided to work our way through the recommended reading list in the back of Poor Charlie’s Almanack chronologically, starting with the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, published in 1897. If you are interested in reading along and joining us for a group discussion in a few weeks, reply to this email or comment below, and I’ll send you the invite to our virtual meet-up.The gambler needs to learn new knowledge about the machines and simultaneously use what they have already learned to optimize their decisions. In the literature, these two activities are referred to as exploring and exploiting. You can’t do both things at the same time. When you explore, you are pulling new arms on the bandit trying to figure out their expected payout. When you exploit, you pull the best arm you’ve found. You need to find the right balance. If you spend too little time exploring, you get stuck playing a machine with a low expected payoff. But if you spend too much time exploring, you will earn less than you would if you played the best arm. This is the explore/exploit trade-off.
This is the Person Selling Your Product by Stay SaaSy
If the person selling your product has a big account fall through, they’d better have other opportunities that can take its place. Even if losing that big prospect wasn’t their fault – the budget got cut, the buyer got laid off, the CEO got abducted by fucking aliens – this quarter’s commission check is now at risk and that nice gift for the kids might be gone with it. If the person selling your product misses the next quarter, they could be dusting off their resume.
Salesforce Signals the Golden Age of Cushy Tech Jobs is Over by Brody Ford, Jake Bennett
“The most important thing you can do in sales and life is to be a ‘homie.’ ”
Really Bad PowerPoint by Seth Godin - revisiting this one from 2007, not much has changed.
Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, to help them understand why you’re excited (or sad, or optimistic or whatever else you are.)If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures, then cancel the meeting and send in a report.
The Art (and Science) of the Steak by Jevi is the best steak prep and cooking explainer I’ve come across.
What will follow is my personal distillation of insights and techniques for cooking the perfect steak, cobbled together through years of research and testing. While there is no “one way” to cook a steak, knowing why you choose to do something (or not do something) is critical to the goal of elevating the centerpiece of your dinner.
Listening
If you are interested in some tactical ways to re-frame focus and distractedness, this was a great listen.
There's something wrong with this very stupid to-do list method, which doesn't force you to understand that there are trade-offs that you have to prioritize properly and that can Only be done with constraints. And that constraints come from your calendar. So you're turning your values into time by making time for traction and having this calendar.
And then only then you can look at your calendar and say, ah, whatever it is I plan to do, that's traction. Everything else is distraction.
Random
Training for the SoCal Iditarod. If you squint, you can see the ocean.
Stay spirited, stay resilient.
Andrew