Idea Surplus Disorder #77
In this week's edition: Filamental wisdom, saying hello better, anti-hiring emails, the in-person collaboration sweet spot, black sheep thinking, founder mode, reading tips, sh*t bucket productivity, obsolete Sony devices, and more.

Good morning, and welcome to another Idea Surplus Disorder.
In this week's edition: Filamental wisdom, saying hello better, anti-hiring emails, the in-person collaboration sweet spot, black sheep thinking, founder mode, reading tips, sh*t bucket productivity, obsolete Sony devices, and more.
I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're along for the ride!
Filamental Thinking
At SuperCollider last Friday, we shared twelve of our "culture hacks" that have emerged during Filament's first nine years. We got a ton of great feedback on the cheat sheet, so I'm sharing it here.

Ideas + Insights
If you want to network better, learn to say hello:
If someone asks you “what do you do?” resist the temptation to respond with your job title. Instead, respond with an “I believe” statement.
A statement of belief will start more interesting conversations than your job title. If the person doesn’t immediately ask a question in return, you can ask them what they believe. Compare this to the usual path: if you open with your job title or rank, this sets up a confrontational hierarchy. And if you introduce yourself with something vague, like “finance” or “tech” or “science” or “art” this sends a signal that you don’t really want to talk about it.
We all need the shit bucket:
Designate a specific place, like a physical trash can or a digital file, as your ‘shit bucket’ for frustrations and issues you can’t change. When you encounter a challenge or setback, write it down and place it in the shit bucket. Once it’s in the bucket, commit to not dwelling on it.
Whatever founder mode consists of, it's pretty clear that it's going to break the principle that the CEO should engage with the company only via his or her direct reports. "Skip-level" meetings will become the norm instead of a practice so unusual that there's a name for it. And once you abandon that constraint there are a huge number of permutations to choose from.
Curiously enough it's an encouraging thought that we still know so little about founder mode. Look at what founders have achieved already, and yet they've achieved this against a headwind of bad advice. Imagine what they'll do once we can tell them how to run their companies like Steve Jobs instead of John Sculley.
Instead of asking your customers how much they love your product, ask them how much they'd miss it if it were gone:
The “Sean Ellis Test” is a leading indicator of product-market fit. Run it by asking your users, “How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?” with options: “Very disappointed,” “Somewhat disappointed,” “Not disappointed,” or “Not applicable.” If 40% or more respond with “Very disappointed,” you have a strong indication of PMF.
Making an offer to a new hire? Perhaps you should tell them all the reasons they shouldn't take it:
Once I decide to extend an offer to someone, I send an email with ~10 bullet points that outline the gnarliest things they will discover about the role, company, and culture in their first 90 days on the job. Things that are difficult to get from the interview process (and frankly, most don't want to share). I made this example to help illustrate what I mean.
Kevin Kelly has more great advice:
- “Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later.”
- "Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get”
- "Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat."
- "When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation."
Is it better to trade 1,000 new followers for a single email subscriber?
Social media engagement rates have plummeted the last 15 years. Ad engagement, too. Google CTRs have fallen massively the last decade with the rise of zero-click searches. The visibility of TV and print advertisements have died off with those mediums. There are tiny exceptions to these (televised sports, some print magazines, podcast advertising, etc.). But, by and large, every marketing channel that’s risen in the last quarter century has fallen in efficacy the last decade. Except email.
This is a fun idea: read the first and last chapter of every unread book on your bookshelf.
What's the collaborative in-person sweet spot for teams? Perhaps it is working together half the time:
The results were unequivocal: The sweet spot for in-person time is about 50%. When teams colocate half the time over the course of a project, they’re 10 times as likely to believe they collaborated effectively compared with those above or below that level.
You have to start poorly to end well:
Every expert started out as a beginner. The most successful people I know love the feeling of being an embarrassing beginner. They thrive on that feeling of newness. They love diving into something with a child-like curiosity. The beginner’s embarrassment is actually a positive signal.
Your entire life will change when you start to embrace that embarrassment of being a beginner. The only way to accomplish something meaningful is to endure days, weeks, months, or even years of embarrassing failure. Those who embrace that feeling of embarrassment will eventually win.
We need more Black Sheep thinking:
But going with the crowd all the time will result in — at best — average results. Index investing is a good example of this dynamic: If you’re comfortable with being average in your investment returns, then it’s a perfectly acceptable approach. But if you strive to achieve anything above average, the only way to consistently outperform is to be willing to go against the grain.
Then shelve terms like “IT strategic plan.” A plan is not a strategy. That’s not to say that plans aren’t important — IT, HR, and all teams and functions should have plans — but plans are operational constructs, however you label them. If you start calling plans strategic, you’ll be tempted to short-change the effort you need to make to create a good strategy.
To succeed, decide how much pain you're willing to sustain:
There’s a lot of crappy advice out there that says, “You’ve just got to want it enough!” Everybody wants something. And everybody wants something enough. They just aren’t aware of what it is they want, or rather, what they want “enough.”
Sometimes I ask people, “How do you choose to suffer?” These people tilt their heads and look at me like I have twelve noses.
And ultimately that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have similar answers. The more interesting question is the pain.
What is the pain that you want to sustain?
Rethinking strategy begins with what you call it:
I recommend that executives use “customer strategy” in place of “marketing strategy” and “employee strategy” in place of “HR strategy,” for example. This places their minds where it should be for strategy — outside with stakeholders, not inside with functions.
Why is it so hard to teach smart people how to learn?
Ironically, their very success at education helps explain the problems they have with learning. Before they enter the world of work, their lives are primarily full of successes, so they have rarely experienced the embarrassment and sense of threat that comes with failure.
As a result, their defensive reasoning has rarely been activated. People who rarely experience failure, however, end up not knowing how to deal with it effectively. And this serves to reinforce the normal human tendency to reason defensively.
teachuild a "triple list" every day:
Every day I list three things I must do: one annoying task (eg, post letter), one uncomfortable one (eg, attend gym class) and one painful one (eg, no sugar). Having three of varying discomfort means I am more likely to do the lesser ones as a way to productively procrastinate on the bigger one.
Fun Finds
- 100 Tiny Tricks to Improve Your Life
- YTCH is like flipping channels, each "channel" is a YouTube category.
- Simple tips on making how-to videos.
- A big map of who lived when.
- Collection of obsolete Sony devices.
Words of Wisdom
"Rigor is Expected. Perfection is an excuse." – Julie Gurner
"We are kept from our goals not by obstacles but by a clear path to lesser goals." – Robert Brault
"When you're on the field, play as if nothing else matters. When you're off the field, remember that the game doesn't matter at all." – James Clear
“The future belongs to whoever wants to go there first.” – Brian Chesky
"I don’t believe in anything you have to believe in." – Fran Lebowitz
"Bureaucracy has no place in an ideas company." – David Ogilvy
"When it comes to standards, as a leader, it is not what you preach it’s what you tolerate." – Jorge Barba
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible!" – Walt Disney
"Ideas are like seeds: they are abundant, and most of them never grow into anything." – Kevin Ashton
"You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." – Zig Ziglar
“If the other guy’s business looks easy, it means you don’t know enough about it.” – Bob Noyce