July 2020

• Loonshots by Safi Bahcall
  • Searate between two phases: Loonshots (artists) and franchises (soldiers).
  • Make sure to have continuously excahgne of projects and aideas in both directions (Tight feedback loop), e.g. first radars didn't work because pilots couldn't fiddle around with buttons. A simpler design let them use the radar during WWII.
  • Loonshots often see three or more deaths. Only people who stay curious about the failures become successful: 'Listening to the Suck with Curiosity'.

May 2020

• Notion, Roam, and The Future of Doing Work by Nikhil Basu Trivedi
  • Nikhil explains his transition from Evernote to Notion.
  • When using a similar product, people are hesitant to try something similar.
  • The other products have to significantly better to attract customers, e.g. Dropbox was 10x better than regular USB stick.
  • 1990s: Microsoft owned the static worktools. 2000s: Google introduced collaboration. 2020s: Many specialized products.
  • Increasing inter-operatibility between specialized products is needed – more APIs and platforms.
  • People will choose the products that fit their work and form their own operating system.
• The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
  • A habit consists of a cue, a routine and a reward.
  • The craving for the reward let's the habit feel automatic.
  • Habits can't be changed, routines can. Use the same cues and triggers and adjust the routine.
  • As soon as people don't belief in a system, it will break, e.g. athletes that start 'thinking'.
  • Anonymous alcoholics build a system of belief and reprogram habits by identifying the cues and rewards and change the routines.
  • Willpower is like a muscle, it gets exhausted when overused but it can be trained.
  • This explains why it's hard to go running after a stressful day – The willpower was used for other tasks.
  • Kids can train their willpower with team sports or music lessons. Statistics show that those kids have higher education.
  • Routines can hinder logical thinking, e.g. isolated departments of the London Underground had too restricted routines that prevented them to react effectively to a fire.
  • Companies analyze user behavior to identify habits, e.g. Target knows when woman gets pregnant and advertise products for babies.
  • Habits can be so deeply integrated that they cause harm. A man killed his wife while sleepwalking. Gamblers can't stop and lose their savings.
  • To reprogram habits, you need to have a plan: First, identify your cue. Second, experiment with the reward to understand what makes you crave. Third, change your habit with a new routine. Four, setup up a plan with your cue, new routine and reward.
• Explaining the Law of Conservation of Complexity by Michael Calleia
  • Complexity is like energy. You can only transform it.
  • Simplifying the system for a user, means moving the complexity somewhere else.
  • In plain math: If it takes a developer 1 week to implement it and saves the user 1 minute, you will need ~20,000 users to make the change relevant.
• Contagious - Why things catch on by Jonah Berger
  • Things catch on if they follow the STEPPS.
  • Social Currency: We share things that make us look good.
  • Make people insiders and let them know something that others don't know. This way, they can share something with social currency, e.g. the secret bar Please Don't Tell.
  • Triggers: Top of mind, tip of tongue.
  • Introduce triggers that people remind about your product, e.g. breaks are associated with Kit Kat. This way the word of mouth is ongoing.
  • Emotion: When we care, we share.
  • High arousal emotions make people share, e.g. excitement, amusement, anger or anxiety.
  • Public: Built to show, built to grow.
  • Make things observable, e.g. the moustache for Movember helped raising millions for men's health.
  • Practical Value: News you can use.
  • Make something useful or lower the the price of a good product.
  • Rule of 100: Use percentage for less 100 and absolute values greater.
  • Stories: Information travels under the guise of idle chatter.
  • People share stories, e.g. the Trojan Horse was shared over generations.
  • Make sure that your product is part of the story.
• How 2 emoji will help you make meaningful progress by Ryan Seamons
  • Pomodoro technique is known but the watermelon framework is great to focus.
  • Have only two important things per day, week or year.
  • If you try to hold more than one watermelon in each hand, you'll end up dropping them all.
  • Priority didn’t have a plural when it was first created but over time Priorities came to mean all the important things.
  • It reminds me of One Big Thing and Big Rocks First.

April 2020

• The Arc of Collaboration by Kevin Kwok
  • Collaboration and productivity can't be separated easily. They rely on each other.
  • Comparision between Dropbox and Slack and who is the better collaboration tool.
  • Dropbox's approach to rely on files has aged.
  • Slack is the exception handler when you can't collaborate in your tool.
  • Many modern tools have collaboration built-in, e.g. Notion or Figma. They can offer much deeper collaboration.
  • There is a need for a meta layer that sits above all tools. This layer has to be on the OS level because many professional tools move away from the browser and offer desktop apps.
• Time is the only real currency we have by The Boring Tech Company
• It's time to build by Andreessen Horowitz
• The History of Command Palettes: How Typing Commands Became The Norm Again by Capiche
• Future of World is in the hands of better APIs and not better Products by Prashant Agrawal