After doing an autopsy at the morgue, it’s a good idea for doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies.
A few hundred years ago, Ignaz Semmelweis proved this now-obvious insight about hygiene. Doctors don’t scrub because it’s fun or convenient, they do it because it’s a powerful way to create better outcomes.
When I was growing up, my family would sometimes go to Fantasy Island, a low-rent amusement park not far from my home. I soon figured out that while the spinning rides seemed appealing and daring, they would always make me sick and ruin the whole day. The good idea? Don’t go on the spinny rides.
Our culture creates traps and opportunities. There’s social and commercial pressure to engage in activities and jobs that don’t serve us very well. If horror movies give you unsettling nightmares, don’t go. No matter how many times your friends invite you, no is a complete sentence.
If being in debt is going to cause a long, stressful spiral for you and your fiancé, then don’t have an expensive wedding.
If doomscrolling your social feeds puts you in a bad mood, put down the phone and go for a walk instead.
And if the sight of blood makes you queasy, perhaps you should consider a form of medicine other than trauma surgeon.
Persistent emotional turmoil can undermine our peace of mind, and it might be caused by an ongoing spiral that’s fueled by the short-term choices we make. Cultural and economic pressure can make those choices feel non-optional, but if we can protect ourselves early, we may be able to create enough value for others that our hygienic choices easily pay for themselves.
There are countless opportunities to thrive. But we might have to make hard choices to find them. Don’t go on the spinny rides. We need you at your best.
Is it helping?
You wouldn’t stay by passively if someone else was beating you up.
Perhaps we shouldn’t accept it when we do it.
The Decware triode amp is the best low-power stereo amp I’ve ever heard. And it’s a bargain. If you have the right speakers, it’s an extraordinary device.
And there’s a two-year waitlist. 2000 people, 11 pages long.
This approach to timing and production serves all the people that matter to the company.
Employees are free to do their best work without rushing.
The operation is able to be right-sized instead of more-sized.
The risks are reduced, since the infinite loop of expansion is almost always followed by the doom loop of contraction.
Would-be customers who are impatient can go elsewhere or even buy a used one.
And the folks who are upgrading to this final, ultimate purchase of equipment discover that the value of the transaction goes up commensurate with how long they have to wait. In a world built on instant convenience, perhaps this is something worth waiting for.
Most MBAs would tell Steve to raise prices, ramp up production, automate, outsource and maximize profits.
But perhaps the resilient and generative approach is precisely the right choice. The hard parts are: 1. making something people are willing to wait for, and 2. having the guts and commitment to make them wait.
Pick your customers, pick your future. And often, entrepreneurs forget that they don’t work for Milton Friedman. We can choose the work we do and the value we create, and we can decide what better looks like.
If you win an auction to get a click, you probably overpaid.
Every other bidder stopped bidding, that’s why you won.
Putting attention up for auction is a good business model—for the seller.
When your project, proposal or resume is rejected, it’s tempting to try to understand why.
Scrutinize the rejection letter and turn the short sentence into a paragraph or an essay, then play it over and over in your search for how to do better next time.
If you can simply answer this rejection, next time will go better.
The frustration really kicks in when the reasons begin to conflict. Too hot, too cold. Too tall, too short…
The truth is simpler: People who reject you or your work aren’t giving you the real reason. They’re simply inserting “here is where I write a few generic sentences to sound polite.”
Even if you could completely answer the objection in that rejection letter, they’re still going to reject you.
That’s because the rejector isn’t here to teach you anything, and isn’t offering the objection so that you will correct it. They’re simply being nice when they say, “go away.”
The honest rejections would say something like, “my boss didn’t like you,” or “I was in a bad mood,” or “we realized that our spec wasn’t very clear and the person we liked didn’t fit it either,” or “we wanted someone who looked more like us,” or “your competence made us nervous,” or…
Take what they wrote and replace it with “no.”
It’ll save a lot of time.
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