Idea Surplus Disorder #85
In this week's edition: Startup SuperCollider, living beyond hope, critical ignoring, the scourge of screens, Chesterton's fence, ice cream music, book toilets, comic ads, the first Idea Surplus Disorder podcast, and more.
In this week's edition: Startup SuperCollider, living beyond hope, critical ignoring, the scourge of screens, Chesterton's fence, ice cream music, book toilets, comic ads, the first Idea Surplus Disorder podcast, and more.
I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here.
Thinksgiving Photos
Thinksgiving was last Thursday. It was amazing. Here are some pics.
Startup Week SuperCollider
We're doing a special edition of SuperCollider for Startup Week on Friday. Sign up here.
Wrap up your Startup Week experience with SuperCollider, a high-impact, half-day session designed specifically for founders and their teams to synthesize and begin to apply everything they’ve learned throughout the week.
This special edition of SuperCollider offers a collaborative space where teams can share insights, consolidate new ideas, and transform inspiration into actionable strategies. By the end of the day, you’ll leave with a clearer path forward, empowered to take your startup to the next level with fresh, practical solutions. Perfect for those looking to turn their Startup Week experience into tangible results!
The Idea Surplus Disorder "Podcast"
I uploaded the "Ideas + Insights" segments of the last four issues of this newsletter to Google's NotebookLM and asked its two AI "hosts" to generate a podcast. Check it out!
Ideas + Insights
Should we live beyond hope?
A WONDERFUL THING happens when you give up on hope, which is that you realize you never needed it in the first place. You realize that giving up on hope didn’t kill you. It didn’t even make you less effective. In fact it made you more effective, because you ceased relying on someone or something else to solve your problems — you ceased hoping your problems would somehow get solved through the magical assistance of God, the Great Mother, the Sierra Club, valiant tree-sitters, brave salmon, or even the Earth itself — and you just began doing whatever it takes to solve those problems yourself.
Is "critical ignoring" a core competency?
Critical ignoring is the ability to choose what to ignore and where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities. Critical ignoring is more than just not paying attention – it’s about practising mindful and healthy habits in the face of information overabundance.
Maybe the kids are only addicted to their devices because they want to be like us:
What if it’s not “How do we keep kids from being obsessed with devices” that we should be asking but instead “How can I get off my own phone so that my kid doesn’t see that as normal?”
Speaking of screens, the mere presence of your smartphone reduces your available cognitive capacity.
And this: Remote workers stare at screens more. A lot more.
Though meant for 1:1s, you might want to have this G.R.O.W. conversation with yourself as you build your 2025 plan:
- Goal: What do you want? Establish what the team member really wants to achieve with their career.
- Reality: What’s happening now? Establish the team member's understanding of their current role and skills.
- Options: What could you do? Generate multiple options for closing the gap from goal to reality.
- Will: What will you do? Identify achievable steps to move from reality to goal.
Do hard things carefully to find your edge ...
My edge is the zone in which I feel like I’m challenging myself, where I’m outside of my comfort zone, but not so far outside of it that I risk doing myself harm. It’s a point of balance between hard and achievable.
Practicing tracking your edge allows you to engage in rubber-banding – stretching yourself while still being able to snap back. Without keeping your edge in mind, you may stretch yourself to the point of breaking. Or you may stretch yourself so little that you never grow.
... but never tear down Chesterton's Fence:
Never tear down a fence before understanding why it got built in the first place. It might be holding back the wolves that you didn't know existed because it was preventing them from entering.
The best problem-solving teams do these things:
The groups that performed well treated mistakes with curiosity and shared responsibility for the outcomes. As a result people could express themselves, their thoughts and ideas without fear of social retribution. The environment they created through their interaction was one of psychological safety.
Seth Godin reminds us that strategy is not a plan:
Strategy is not a plan. A plan might come with a guarantee: “If we do this, we win.” A strategy, on the other hand, comes with the motto: “This might not work.” Strategy is a philosophy of becoming, a chance to create the conditions to enable the change we seek to make in the world.
When the boss demands a strategy that comes with certainty and proof, we’re likely to settle for a collection of chores, tasks, and tactics, which is not the same as an elegant, resilient strategy. To do strategy right, we need to lean into possibility.
You cannot compromise your way to an elegant strategy. Effective strategies come from tiny teams and insightful individuals, not committees. While it’s tempting to invite people with power on the org chart to sit with us as we develop our strategy, this myopic move will likely amplify the defense of sunk costs.
Fun Finds
- Toilets disguised as books.
- Ten items you really got from comic book ads.
- 1000 questions that uncover the wisdom of an elder.
- The ice cream truck music monopoly.
- 1000 things you can make yourself.
- Return to a 90's mall.
- Inside Nike's Secret R&D Facility
Words of Wisdom
"The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development." – Alfred North Whitehead
"Sometimes fear does not subside and one must choose to do it afraid." – Elisabeth Elliot
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”– Ernest Hemingway
“People like you more when you working towards something. Not when you have it.” – Drake
"I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” — Antonio Gramsci
“You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” – C.S. Lewis
"It's better to have tried and failed than to live life wondering what would've happened if I had tried." – Alfred Lord Tennyson
"Mastery is the best goal because the rich can't buy it, the impatient can't rush it, the privileged can't inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status." – Derek Sivers