Category: Thinking Clearly — Archive of past newsletters

Hello Amazing!
In the work I do every day at SYPartners and beyond, I am frequently asked to help with such things as “company values” or “strategic vision” or “purpose statement”. It’s always interesting, especially when we discuss not just the content but also how it works in practice: why will any employee think or act in any different way because there is a new purpose statement? Some people seem to prefer much more clear directives, describing behaviors that employees should do, or a checklists and process maps. I don’t think any way is the right way, but I like to think of them on a spectrum of leadership modes: from the abstract and inspiring to the concrete and directive. The best is when we recognize what each end of the spectrum is good for and use it for that. 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
I’m working on a draft of a book about my teaching philosophy. One of the core tenants is about helping people build confidence in exploring and learning on their own. But how do you practically do that, and how can you use your expertise in a meaningful way? The way I have been thinking about it, is to think of all my expert knowledge as a large field of data. It’s tempting to take people on a guided tour around this field and show them everything. However, instead I try to use my expertise to design really good challenges for people. I give them a clear starting point, a direction to explore and a goal of where they should try to get to. Ideally, having people work in teams, allow them to explore different pathways toward the destination. In the end the teams have discovered many of the elements of the field and can teach each other their different discoveries. For example, I have used this when teaching people software. Without telling them much, I used my expertise to give them a really good starting point, and just enough knowledge that they could build something functional on their own, in very little time. 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
I’m fascinated with airplanes, especially how they are built to be safe, by designing for the critical things that can go wrong. For example, what do you do if an engine fails during take-off? As the plane accelerates down the runway it will reach a speed where it is not yet fast enough to fly, but going so fast that it can’t stop safely either. This speed is called V1, and it varies depending on aircraft and weather conditions. At this speed the pilot will no longer abort the take-off. Even if an engine explodes, the other engine will keep accelerating the plane until it can lift off. I love that there is this in-between area, where you have to do something counter-intuitive in the event of a failture. It made me think of my own (less dangerous) work, where there are also times where a project can be in trouble, team members get sick, and yet you have to make it work anyway. In your work, what’s the V1 point? How do you know if you’ve reached it? Is there a similarly counter-intuitive move that helps? 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
This week I worked a lot with someone who seemed very worried about the work we were doing. I wasn’t worried at all. At least I wasn’t in the beginning. But after two days I found myself not able to sleep at night, getting increasingly stressed out. Finally I realized that I had simply adopted someone else’s worry. It wasn’t really mine. I just felt their worry. This didn’t fully resolve the stress, but once I could recognize it as someone else’s, I could more easily let it go, and at least reduce the stress, think more clearly and make some actual progress. 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
About a month ago I started working full time at SYPartners, a consulting firm in NYC where I have freelanced in the past, and that I truly love. These first five weeks have been nothing less than amazing.
Shifting from freelance to full time employment, however, affects how much time and energy I spend on short, medium and long term work. I think of it like an investment portfolio, with a mix of assets to achieve the right balance of risk and stability. As an independent I spent roughly half my time delivering client work, 35% on relationships and selling new work, and the rest on more long term ideas like this newsletter and my podcast. With a job, almost all my time is spent on short term work, which is how it should be, but I’m intentionally using a bit of what’s left on ‘very long term’ work, in this case a book. I have hired a freelance editor that I have worked with in the past, to help me gather my ideas and create some order. 
How are you balancing your work portfolio? and are you getting the desired outcomes? 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
While I was on summer vacation with my wife and our kids, I would often take the kids in the morning and let my wife sleep in. We called this “the gift of sleep” and it’s a gift she really enjoys. However, there were days were I was so exhausted myself that I couldn’t really afford to give this gift. I needed sleep too. But I tried to give it anyway, and failing to be honest with myself, I didn’t realize that I would expect her to reciprocate. Suddenly the “gift” of sleep had become a debt. She owed me. Obviously this didn’t work well. Now, I try to remember that generosity is great, but that I shouldn’t give something if I can’t afford to really give it. Nobody wants a debt. Have you ever done this? Or been the recipient?
With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
In some ways it’s almost so obvious that it’s not worth saying: if you want high quality output you need a combination of creative output and a good editor who can filter the shit from the diamonds. Yet, because it feels so obvious I also tend to forget and I need to remind myself again and again. Today I realized that I hadn’t written a newsletter for more than two months. In my desire to improve the quality of my work I had stepped up my inner editor to a point where I couldn’t produce any output at all, and while I’m still interested in increasing quality and becoming a better editor, I’m not willing to do so at the cost of all output. So today I am sharing a first draft. Maybe it’s a diamond. Maybe it’s just shit. Either way: I wanted to do something.
Perhaps you need a reminder too?
With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing! I think that we humans are always trying to understand. We look around us and we try to figure out how the world works. Because if we understand it correctly, we might begin to predict (at least with some probability) what might happen in the future. Unfortunately, some of us are sometimes too quick to jump to conclusions which are only partially true. For example, I find that a linear understanding is particularly seductive. We think that learning happens in linear, additive manner (Economics 101, 201, 301 etc.), that they build their endurance for long-distance running linearly, that the path to enlightenment is a series of sequential steps. The risk is that we miss cyclical, seasonal and other non-linear patterns.
The image is further distorted if we also begin to conflate our ability to predict with an ability to control. If we set higher ‘targets’ (for sales, people growth, test scores, GDP..) we think that the flowers will grow faster. But that will be for another day.

With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing! How good do you feel you are in doing your job? Do you feel that you know what you are doing and how it all works or is it more messy? When it comes to automating work using Machine Learning it’s the tasks that have the most clearly defined (or definable) inputs and outputs that will be automated first. So if your job feels really really really messy, it’s probably because it’s harder to automate.

With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing! In order to achieve anything, we have to set high standards for ourselves. However, for many of us this leads to a sense of inadequacy, because we are not able to meet those high standards. It’s tempting to lower our standards and in some situations, it might be the best thing, especially if it’s something that’s just not very important for us. But for the stuff that matters most, the real trick is to add time. To be patient and persistent. Sometimes radically so. For the most daunting quests I recommend thinking across multiple lifetimes.

With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing! If you are in a relationship, a job, a marriage, a city or something else, and it doesn’t feel right, how do you know if it’s best to stay and try to fix it or to leave and go elsewhere? I think it’s easy to be seduced by the idea that something look good on paper (“the job pays well”, “the city is full of opportunity”). It’s also easy to look at something and only see what’s missing. What might be best is to look for the roots. The deep essentials. What do you think? Have you mistakenly left something that actually had roots? Or are you stuck in something that sounds great, but doesn’t have roots?

With much love

— Mathias

In celebrations of my friend Dev Aujla’s new book, 50 Ways to Get a Job.