No Day Without A Thought

Desire = contract with yourself to be unhappy until a certain event occurs.

Something along those lines is what Naval, founder of AngelList said. Not sure if he came up with that, but that doesn't matter right now.

For now 5 months or so, I have been religiously working out again and making sports a clear priority. Also changing some other habits on the side. For a long time it seemed like I will never get back into shape, nothing changed. Now, after 5 months - still a long way to go - but I can see the first results of this routine kicking in.

Even though I obviously like to see the outcome, "the journey is the reward". Focus on the process and the outcome will come. However, if you not gonna enjoy the process you will not get the outcome and even if you can push yourself to get it, maintaining that status will be impossible.

Trust and enjoy the process and the outcome will follow.

Jocko Willink is a beast. Former Navy SEAL and now likely one of those mental/performance coaches.

It's pretty simple, no excuses. What do you do on the days where you don't feel like working out, doing your best work, brushing your teeth, ...

"I do it anyway."

It's likely just the little voice in your head and you will be happy after.

So, do it anyway, go through the motions!

Not sure about you, but there are a series of things I would like to change in my work

• not being driven by the VC funded startup lifecycle, i.e. we need to show growth to get next funding within 6months
• focus on the essentials and fundaments before jumping to the next ones, aka we need payments => this new thing will help us sell. Why not first get the fundamentals right?
• predictability/control doesn't lead to a better outcome, it's not about being on time for launching a new functionality, but if the new functionality actually solves the problem
• losing product focus and adding more and more different products which basically makes it hard to evolve on any product front
• tbh, being too far into the game already/too big to make a hard stop and start from fresh

However, if you want to change things, there is a certain amount of steps to actually get the team rallied up behind what you think is the right path.

Side note: See the "what YOU think is the right path", you as well should be open and consider the other side, because after all, who says you have all the answers.

There is a piece by Sean Johnson that I just remembered and which is actually better than what I will ever write (link). The only thing I actually wanted to mention before I jumped on the keyword is that you your boss is running this small or big ship and on his mind is all the processes that already tie in each other. And suddenly, likely out of the blue, you want to change everything. This obviously is a tough bill to swallow if brought up in the wrong circumstances. Let's say you are discussing a small thing within a group and then you come up with all this bigger picture which basically means stopping everything and shifting focus. You will get resistance.

Approach people individually. Tell the story behind your thinking/where you are coming from and that you did your research aka data, best practices or similarly. Or the other way around, start mentioning small nuggets in conversations, bring them up more and more, like a specific framework. If that actually solves sth you will see how others will automatically adapt it anyway, without a big company announcement or email.

It's not about politics, but rather human psychology, you don't need to have this negative association in your mind but just appreciate that is how humans work (obviously if you have an ego driven a-hole in the team, they are decided to lead their life differently/not actually use self reflection or fear it and that's their cake, move on without them).

Don't be limited by fear and negativity. Take on the situation, own it and approach it from a sense of learning/what's the best way to deal with it.

I just opened Posthaven and thought about what I should write. Before that, I was reading about how important writing is especially in a manager role, as it keeps you accountable. You write sth down/create it and make it publicly available. It needs to be concise and clearly understandable, as it will become a reference point.

This is likely also the most frequent reason why people don't blog, next to the actual time it takes + they want to write sth special that didn't exist yet instead of just repeating (what I am technically doing rn). But, to not sidetrack too much, being wrong and making it publicly available can be daunting. After all, it is a representation of yourself and on social media (besides Snapchat or similar) there is a public record of your life where you hence tend to publish the goodies, as this is like you want to be seen.

Same with writing. You might write about sth and 3 years later you come to know that you your previous perspective was wrong/embarrassing/harmful/...

And that is right.

In the end, however, as XXX said (don't remember the name and will likely never look it up again and edit this post): It's not so much about the reading, but the actual writing and making your thoughts concise. It is an exercise for yourself, not some work you do for others to look great!

When I opened Posthaven I wanted to write sth unique, but then opted for this, as I wanted to go through the thought process of this and actually process what I've just read.