Idea Surplus Disorder #70

Welcome to Idea Surplus Disorder, your weekly newsletter curated by Matt Homann.

This week, I'll share a great daily process we use at Filament, along with interesting ideas about work, fun discoveries, and the most provocative quotes I've stumbled upon since our last time together.

Filament's Vitamin C's

We've built a cool daily check-in process at Filament LLC called our "Vitamin C's," centered on the four themes of Commitment, Collaboration, Curiosity, and Celebration.

Whenever I talk about it, people want the questions we ask and the process we use, so I'm sharing it here for you.

Thinksgiving Applications Open

If you're in business or working with a nonprofit, you've really got to check out Thinksgiving. Please watch this video, share it with your colleagues, and consider entering a team this year.

Nonprofit applications close in two weeks!

Ideas + Insights

Write a better bio for yourself with AI search engine Perplexity by searching for "Who's __________ (filling in your name)?" Here's "Who's Matt Homann?" and I'm not going to lie, it is better than the one I've been sharing!

Be the right kind of stubborn:

The reason the persistent and the obstinate seem similar is that they're both hard to stop. But they're hard to stop in different senses. The persistent are like boats whose engines can't be throttled back. The obstinate are like boats whose rudders can't be turned. 

The persistent are attached to the goal. The obstinate are attached to their ideas about how to reach it.

Rituals, not habits, are the key to productivity.

loser'sEducation is not learning is not training:

• Education is done *to* you. You’re mandated, subjected to it.
• Learning is about opting in, enrolling, choosing to go on the journey- You can learn (a lot) through teaching others.
• Training is learning applied to practical, real-world situations

This is the best AI Rant I've read in a long time (especially with all the expletives):

Most organizations cannot ship the most basic applications imaginable with any consistency, and you're out here saying that the best way to remain competitive is to roll out experimental technology that is an order of magnitude more sophisticated than anything else your I.T department runs, which you have no experience hiring for, when the organization has never used a GPU for anything other than junior engineers playing video games with their camera off during standup, and even if you do that all right there is a chance that the problem is simply unsolvable due to the characteristics of your data and business? This isn't a recipe for disaster, it's a cookbook for someone looking to prepare a twelve course f-ing catastrophe.

How about you remain competitive by fixing your shit? I've met a lead data scientist with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive customer records who is allowed to keep their password in a text file on their desktop, and you're worried that customers are best served by using AI to improve security through some mechanism that you haven't even come up with yet? You sound like an asshole and I'm going to kick you in the jaw until, to the relief of everyone, a doctor will have to wire it shut, giving us ten seconds of blessed silence where we can solve actual problems.

Are you playing a loser's game?

Here's an important truth: Most games in life are Loser's Games. You don't get "paid" for complex, magnificent shots—you get "paid" for consistently avoiding unforced errors. For figuring it out. For showing up and doing what you say you're going to do. In most games in life, the sum of consistent, ordinary performances adds up to something extraordinary.

This is a great list of simple ways you can email like a boss. A few favorites:

Instead of "Sorry for the delay," say "Thanks for your patience." Instead of "I think maybe we should ...," say "It'd be best if we ..." And instead of "Just wanted to check in," ask "When can I expect an update?"

Here's a similar list of 35 Phrases to Help You Set Boundaries that might be meant for parents but includes these workplace gems:

• While I trust your judgment, I still need you to follow some rules. We can discuss them together.
• I cannot agree to this. You have to meet me halfway on this issue.
• I need some more time to process this. Let’s revisit this later after I have had a chance to think about it.
• I see that you are trying to help me, and I appreciate your concern, but I would like to handle things on my own.
• I understand you need my help, but I cannot work on this right now.
• I understand where you are coming from, but if you break these rules, there will be consequences.

Perhaps before you roll out your new strategic plan, make sure you've not fallen prey to any of these five "myths" of strategy. The one mistake we see our clients make all the time is believing their List of Initiatives is a Strategy:

The fatal shortcomining with a list of initiatives is that it is focused on the things you control and not on the one terribly important thing that you can’t: customers. That is the tricky thing, the hard thing. Making up a list of non-stupid things that are fully in your control is dead easy. Deciding to invest in a set of activities that compels customers to act as you wish — that is hard, and exceedingly valuable.

Facing conflict with a family member or coworker? Here's one way to take the high road:

Mentalising is a skill that can help you garner insight into the challenging behaviours of others. It involves getting curious about the behaviours you observe and considering what possible emotions, motivations, thoughts, needs, goals or beliefs might be driving those behaviours.

An easy way to practise this is to simply ask yourself: ‘How does it make sense that someone might act that way?’ You can consider what might be going on in the other person’s mind that could help you understand why they would act the way they do, while trying to resist the urge to label them negatively.

Visual (stars, thumbs up, etc.) ratings boost purchases because they seem higher:

Why? Because of left-digit anchoring: A 3.8 rating feels like 3.0 because customers ignore the rightmost digits.

How many Chalkboard Decisions is your organization making?

There is a certain category of decisions that work well in the classroom but not in real life. I call these chalkboard decisions. These decisions tease us because the math always seems correct.

The problem is that most decisions are less about the math and more about judgment. The math always points to the optimal immediate decision, which is rarely the best long-term decision.

I see the same thing in business all the time. The math says lever up, reduce inventory, pay your employees as little as possible, charge your customers as much as possible, and take advantage of the weakness of your suppliers. You don’t need to look far to see companies who take this approach. In the short term, these decisions almost always seem optimal. In the long term, they almost always fail.

James Clear shares a great question:

Instead of asking, "What would make me feel happy?" try asking, "What would make the group excited?"

Many of the best moments in life happen when the group is having fun. You feed off one another's energy. What can you do to laugh or gasp or scream or smile with others?

Fun Finds

• I think I could watch this Epic Airline Safety Video once or twice, but not every time I fly.
• What's new (and thus free) in the Public Domain?
• Inventions that didn't change a thing.
• Eggs in art.
• A Pre-History of Zoom.
• Good signoffs.
• Brick Breaker, but with your calendar.

Words of Wisdom

“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.” — Dale Carnegie

"Adulthood is saying 'but after this week things will slow down a bit' over and over until you die." – Unknown

"The long run is just a collection of short runs you have to put up with." – Morgan Housel

“If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run—and often in the short one—the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.” – Arthur C. Clarke

"The degree to which a person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth he can accept about himself without running away." – Leland Val Van De Wall

"People who scoff at the impossible tend to look stupid fairly soon afterward." – Daniel O'Malley

"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." – Joseph Campbell

"Against criticism we can neither protect nor defend ourselves; we must act in despite of it, and gradually it resigns itself to this." – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“It can be difficult to appreciate how much avoiding the standard ways of failing dramatically increases the odds of success.” – Shane Parrish

"The reason it’s so hard to follow the leader is this: The leader is the leader because she did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken – it’s no longer remarkable when you do it." – Seth Godin