Leading a company during both peacetime and wartime requires a unique combination of skills. Jeff Immelt was the CEO of General Electric for 16 years and led the company through three major crises. He shares some of his leadership tips in this podcast from the Knowledge Project.
Read MoreHow to Take Smart Notes was recommended to me by several friends. It's a step-by-step guide to Niklas Luhmann's note-taking system: the slip box ("Zettelkasten" in German). It also details the psychological principles that make the slip box note-taking system so effective.
Read MoreIn Anything You Want, Derek Sivers shares 40 lessons he learned during the ten years he ran CD Baby. His primary point is that, in business, you can be as "unconventional, unique, and quirky" as you want. Like a painting, a business is a reflection of its maker.
Read MoreI've always been curious about why we humans find it so hard to ask each other for help. In this TED talk, social psychologist Heidi Grant shares four simple rules to follow when asking someone for help.
Read MoreI've followed David Perell on Twitter for some time, and I've wanted to learn more about his work and ideas. This Indie Hackers podcast conversation with Courtland Allen was a perfect entry point into David's headspace.
Read MoreMy sister Campbell is a current Robertson Scholar and she recently reviewed this essay as part of her leadership program. It's a dense article that builds on Peter Senge's work on systems thinking and leadership.
Read MoreI discovered Nir Eyal’s work on the NFX podcast. His concept of traction vs distraction really spoke to me. I read this book to get a deeper understanding of his framework for becoming "indistractable".
Read MoreI’m a semi-regular listener of the NFX podcast. I listened to this episode a while ago, and I liked what the guest Nir Eyal had to say about focus. Nir shares the differences between a habit and a routine and walks through the frameworks from his best-selling books.
Read MoreI’m a member of the Trends.vc community, and Show Your Work is the book of the month. I don’t know about you, but I struggle with self-promotion. I want to be better about sharing my work, but I often talk myself out of it. Show Your Work teaches you how to build sharing into your work routine. Instead of keeping your work secret, you regularly share bits and pieces of your process, your ideas, and what you’re learning.
Read MoreIn this podcast episode, the hosts of My First Million and the founder of Deep Sentinel discuss “human in the loop” services. The basic idea is that you can turn a regular service into a “super service” by using technology to supercharge a human. This concept is relevant to what I’m trying to do at LegUp Health, so I wanted to make sure I captured some notes on this topic. Shout out to Tyler King for recommending this segment to me.
Read MoreI have a general interest in community building. One of my previous companies, GroupCurrent, played in this space. You typically don’t see communities get acquired. They’re tricky investments. One weird thing about communities is that they often get worse as they grow. And they’re typically built by a single individual instead of a scalable system. This podcast episode provides an inside look at a unique community (Unreal Collective) that gets better as it grows and was recently acquired.
Read MoreThis podcast episode on parenting with Dr. Laura Markham by the Knowledge Project had some great information. Even if you don’t have children, the information about self-regulation and emotion coaching can be useful in most relationships. Here are my notes.
Read MoreSince studying Charlie Munger’s 25 psychological tendencies, I’ve wanted to explore additional mental models. A mental model is an analogy or framework that helps you explain things. It's like a recipe for decision-making. I’ve enjoyed George MacGill’s recent Twitter threads, so I thought I’d give one of his podcast episodes a listen. Here are my notes.
Read MoreAs knowledge workers become more responsible for the trajectory of their own careers, they are forced to learn how to manage themselves. In Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker provides a framework that any knowledge worker can use to learn how to manage him-or-herself. Here are my notes and takeaways.
Read MoreMy wife, Sable, and I are expecting our first child in late-March. To help me gain some perspective on (and help with) some of the professional “pregnancy hurdles” she is facing, she asked me to read this book. Boy am I glad I did. This book exposed my lack of empathy for working parents and professionals expecting a child, especially working moms and mothers-to-be. Here are my notes.
Read MoreI discovered this talk by Herb Kelleher while reading Essentialism. Herb was the co-founder and long-time CEO of Southwest Airlines. I haven’t spent much time studying Herb, so I thought I’d check him out. I’m glad I did. Herb, who passed away in 2019, was an impressive leader and storyteller. He was quite funny too. Here are my notes from the talk.
Read MoreWhen you start a company, there are more to-dos than there is time to do them. Worse, everything seems important. It can quickly become overwhelming. Essentialism provides a framework that helps you identify your true priorities and execute on them.
Read MoreAs a Man Thinketh has been on my list to read for longer than a year. Some consider it to be one of the top self-help books of all time. While this book is only 50ish pages, I found the writing to be quite difficult to follow. It took me more time than I’m willing to admit to digest the content and translate it into modern-day eighth-grade reading level takeaways. If you’d like to save some time, check out these simple notes and quotes.
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