How to achieve great things!

💡 JC's Newsletter #157 - 2023-02-07

Dear friends,

In JC’s Newsletter, I share the articles, documentaries, and books I enjoyed the most in the last week, with some comments on how we relate to them at Alan. I do not endorse all the articles I share, they are up for debate. 

I’m doing it because a) I love reading, it is the way that I get most of my ideas, b) I’m already sharing those ideas with my team, and c) I would love to get your perspective on those. 

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🔎 Some topics we will cover this week

• A scientist’s framework for doing outstanding individual work

• Traits you can and cannot change in someone

• Winning the battle against a big problem

• The importance of consistency

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👉 Richard Hamming: You and Your Research (Paul Graham)

❓ Why am I sharing this article?

The framework for scientists applies to us:

• Push for getting significant results.

• Having courage in decisions.

• Focus on the right important problems. The important problems are the ones you have an attack on. 

• Start small, even to do big things.

• Change defects to assets by turning a problem around.

• “Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest”

• There is no “free lunch”, to achieve great things in work you need to neglect some others (the good question is what is easy to drop, and what is really important to keep focusing on to be happy).

• The importance of ambiguity. 

• "It is a poor workman who blames his tools — the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the best answer he can."

• We need to market our product to our customers.

• How to make great talks.

• Read to find problems/inspirations, not solutions.

• In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: 

  • They don't work on important problems.

  • They don't become emotionally involved.

  • They don't try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important.

  • They keep giving themselves alibis why they don't.

The courage of working on hard problems:

• Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good work.

• Why shouldn't you set out to do something significant. You don't have to tell other people, but shouldn't you say to yourself, "Yes, I would like to do something significant."

• Newton said, "If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results."

• One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.

Focus on the right problems:

• The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go.

• Often the great scientists, by turning the problem around a bit, changed a defect to an asset. 

  • For example, many scientists when they found they couldn't do a problem finally began to study why not. 

  • They then turned it around the other way and said, "But of course, this is what it is" and got an important result.

• "What are the important problems in my field?" If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work.

  • It's not the consequence that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack. That is what makes a problem important. 

  • I thought hard about where was my field going, where were the opportunities, and what were the important things to do. 

• "It is a poor workman who blames his tools — the good man gets on with the job, given what he's got, and gets the best answer he can."

Compounding interests:

• Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest. 

  • Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. 

  • The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity — it is very much like compound interest.

• Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.

The trade-offs to achieve great things:

• You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done.

• The misapplication of effort is a very serious matter. Just hard work is not enough - it must be applied sensibly.

• For those who don't get committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things and doesn't produce the big result. 

  • So the way to manage yourself is that when you have a real important problem you don't let anything else get the center of your attention — you keep your thoughts on the problem. 

  • Keep your subconscious starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully and get the answer in the morning, free.

• I think it is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class work because the truth is, the value is in the struggle more than it is in the result.

The importance of ambiguity:

• Most people like to believe something is or is not true. 

• Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. 

  • They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. 

  • If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance.

• Darwin writes in his autobiography that he found it necessary to write down every piece of evidence which appeared to contradict his beliefs because otherwise they would disappear from his mind. 

  • When you find apparent flaws you've got to be sensitive and keep track of those things, and keep an eye out for how they can be explained or how the theory can be changed to fit them. 

• You should look for is the positive side of things instead of the negative. How, given the situation, by changing the way I looked at it, I converted what was apparently a defect to an asset.

Marketing your work:

• It is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it.

• The fact is everyone is busy with their own work. You must present it so well that they will set aside what they are doing, look at what you've done, read it, and come back and say, "Yes, that was good." 

• You have to learn to write clearly and well so that people will read it, you must learn to give reasonably formal talks, and you also must learn to give informal talks.

• Why some papers are remembered and most are not. 

  • The technical person wants to give a highly limited technical talk. 

  • Most of the time the audience wants a broad general talk and wants much more survey and background than the speaker is willing to give.

  • As a result, many talks are ineffective. 

  • The speaker names a topic and suddenly plunges into the details he's solved. 

  • Few people in the audience may follow. 

  • You should paint a general picture to say why it's important, and then slowly give a sketch of what was done.

  • Furthermore, many talks are filled with far too much information.

Read to find problems/inspirations, not solutions:

• If you read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they thought.

•  If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a lot of creative people do — get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. 

• So yes, you need to keep up. 

  • You need to keep up more to find out what the problems are than to read to find the solutions. 

  • The reading is necessary to know what is going on and what is possible. 

  • But reading to get the solutions does not seem to be the way to do great research.

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👉 Traits You Can Change, and Traits You Can't (Stay SaaSy)

❓ Why am I sharing this article?

• Interesting idea for coaching and recruiting.

Can change according to the author:

• Ability to Step Back and See the Big Picture

  • By learning to question your own assumptions or initial reaction

• Industry and Technical Knowledge

  • By learning you can become a passable practitioner in 6 to 24 months

• Confidence

  • By getting help scoring wins

• Cultural Norms (within reason)

• Poise (Working with Leadership)

Can't change according to the author:

• Raw Intelligence

  • Being really smart tends to be domain agnostic

• Emotional Reactivity 

  • What you see on day 1 is probably within 15% of what you’ll get on day 1000.

• Natural speed

  • No matter the external factor people tend to snap back to their normal speed

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👉 Carolyn Coughlin: Become A Better Listener (The Knowledge Project - Episode #157)

❓ Why am I sharing this article?

• I agree that most of the work to win the battle against a big problem is being intentional about working hard on it, how to approach it, and also giving yourself some unstructured time to think about it.

At some point, you have to take that first step. And that first step is not going to be at the base of that mountain. That first step may be going to buy mountain gear for the first time. It's going to be the training that goes into it. So earning winning the battle is really somehow engineering, designing your calendar in an intentional matter, where each day you can focus on getting to the mountaintop, but the mountaintops not going to be earned on that day, but there is a mountaintop for that day.

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👉 Brain Food: Consistency (Farnam Street)

❓ Why am I sharing this article?

• I agree that consistency is a super-power that compounds

• The longer the time frame for results, the less you need intensity and the more you need consistency. 

• Consistency isn't simply willpower, which comes and goes. Consistency is doing it when you don't feel like doing it. 

• If you want advantageous divergence, you have to do the things that matter on your best day and your worst day.

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