The only problem to solve is problem solving itself

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: creativity / innovation = problem solving ability. You can cultivate your ability to read, play a video game, do maths, empathise, remain calm… and innovate. Innovation is not magic, it is a process, it is predictable, it is inevitable! 

500 years ago <10% of humans could read. Now 90% can read.

"Creativity (innovation) as the new literacy.”

• I’d argue that currently less than 10% of humans can do more than very basic innovation. 

• Just like one can learn to read, I believe one can learn to innovate. 

• All repetitive physical and mental jobs are being replaced by machines. Therefore all future jobs will be problem solving based. 

• Elon Musk isn’t twice as innovative as average, he’s more like 1,000,000x times. Honestly I think I’m 100x more innovative than I was 2 years ago. I’m 100% confident that the average human can be 100x more innovative than they currently are! 

  • This blog is some of my learnings on how to systematically improve innovation ability. 

• If we get Edrolo / OwlTail right, in a couple of generations, I think we can get 90% of humanity being able to do high level innovation :). 

  • In other words, just like 200 years ago how 10% of humans could read but now 90% can. IMO, now 10% of humans can do high level innovation, if we get this right in ~50 years 90% will be able to :). 

• Jingle: Regurgitating others ‘if/then statements’ on queue IMO is menial, making new ‘if/then statements’ is meaning! 

A model I have made for problem solving… yes problem solving problem solving! 

• Problem Solving = Innovation Ability = 1. Knowledge ingredients * 2. Recall * 3. Transfer * 4. Model Ability * 5. Communication

  • 4. Model Ability = 

    • To me, the most important variable. 

    • The good thing is that IMO one can systematically build this ability in themselves and in others :). 

  • For details on the other variables see the bottom of the blog

Everything can be represented in a 3 Dimensional Model and with Pieces and an Instruction Set

• Problem Solving = 1. Pieces * 2. Instruction Set = 3. Solution (outcome of problem solving AKA 3 Dimensional Model)

  • 2. Instruction Set = ‘4. Model Ability’

• LEGO visualisation

4. Model Ability - Taxonomy + Visuals

• L0: cannot see models 

  • You see the end solution as ‘one piece’.

• L1: can take an end solution and break it into a model

• A big part of making models is to be able to break something into ‘1. Pieces’ and ‘2. Instruction Sets’. You need to be able to do this with amorphous concepts like ‘ideas’. For example an Atom with protons, neutrons and electrons is a ‘model’ of an idea. 

• L2: can make small modifications to an existing model to adapt to your desired outcome. 

  • From a Jeep => Golf Cart. It’s very similar but does a mildly different job.

    • Only modifications to Pieces (no new pieces) 

    • Only modification to the Instruction Set (no new steps)

• So you would modify some ‘pieces’ and the ‘instruction set’ mildly to get this new ‘model’ :)

• L3: you can make large modifications of an existing model. 

  • From a Jeep => Bulldozer

    • Some new Pieces

    • Some new steps to the Instruction Set

• Adding the front loader is a significant new piece onto of a ‘vehicle’ vs ‘modifications of the same parts for Jeep => Golf Cart’

• You’d need new ‘pieces’ and new parts of the ‘instruction set’... but you are still working off the base ‘Jeep Instruction Set’. 

• L4: taking the concept of an existing model but taking it to a new context

  • The concept of building a motor vehicle can be applied to other areas, eg building an Airplane.

• You are still making a physical machine, but this is mega different from a motor vehicle. 

  • Majority new Pieces

  • Majority of steps in Instruction Set new.

• L5: making a model from scratch

  • All new pieces, all new Instruction Set.

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Detail

Model Overview - at some point I’ll do a deep dive on all variables of the model… this blog really only gets into ‘4. Model Ability’. 

• Problem Solving = 1. Knowledge ingredients * 2. Recall * 3. Transfer * 4. Model Ability * 5. Communication

  • 1. Knowledge ingredients

    • All else equal the more Knowledge ingredients you have the better. 

• But IMO it’s best to get to ‘Competent / Proficient’ in as many fields as possible vs getting to be a ‘Master’ in one. I find that most insights come laterally. Positive Sum Problem Solving is helping improve the world in some way, the better understanding of the world you have, the better your ability to form a solution. 

• So get to proficient in finance, economics, politics, geopolitics, startups, design, management, philosophy, sociology, etc etc. 

• However having all the ingredients in the world is no good if you can’t do anything with them! 

• 2. Recall

  • If you can’t recall a ‘Knowledge Ingredients’ it’s useless. 

  • You improve recall by 1. Using ingredients and 2. Reading about them. 

  • Studies show that everyone slowly forgets everything. 

  • If I see a podcast / article on something similar to a ‘Knowledge Ingredient’ I’m already aware of I think ‘goodie’, a chance to 1. Recall and 2. See how someone else thinks about this ingredient and uses it as part of a bigger solution. 

• 3. Transfer

  • Taxonomy:

    • L1: can only use the ‘Knowledge ingredient’ in 100% of the context where you found it. 

    • L2: can use the ‘Knowledge ingredient’ in 50% of the context where you found it. 

    • L1: can use the ‘Knowledge ingredient’ in totally new circumstances (ie in 0% of the context where you found it).

  • Knowledge in new circumstances is sick! 

• 4. Model Ability

  • This is what this blog is going to be mainly about! 

  • ‘4. Model Ability’ is your ability to join individual ‘1. Knowledge Ingredients’ together into 3D Solutions. 

  • Taxonomy: 

    • L0: Don’t think in models. Just regurgitate rote-learned facts

    • L1: can only use existing models that you know. 

      • IMO one can get 100% on the vast majority of high schools and university subjects with this and 'Transfer L1 - only in the context you learned the knowledge' :(. 

      • Examples of models: 

        • Momentum = Velocity * Mass

        • ICE ranking => Impact, Confidence, Execution

        • PSHE => Problem Solution How Execution

        • Classical Conditioning

      • IMO through textbooks we can systematically build skills beyond ‘L1 Model Ability’ for people! 

    • L2: can make up 1x new reasoning step for a model. FYI most people really struggle here. 

    • L3: can make up 2x new reasoning steps. 

    • L4: etc. You ultimately need to be able to build 50 step new sequences of logic. 

      • a big model is now 1000s of cells in a spreadsheet with linking logic and multiple paths :). 

    • Comment: 

      • IMO the existing high school education system does stuff beyond ‘L1: can only use existing models that you know’

      • The good thing is that I believe it’s possible to systematically teach / build ‘4. Model Ability’ in yourself and others. 

• 5. Communication

  • “If you can't explain something to a 6 year old, you don't understand it yourself”. - Einstein

  • Einstein intelligence taxonomy: 

    • L1: Smart

    • L2: Intelligent

    • L3: Brilliant

    • L4: Genius

    • L5: Simple

  • Comment: 

    • If you can’t communicate a ‘solution’ it isn’t much of a solution. Being able to cut out all of the crap is serious challenge… and super rewarding and super fun! 

    • Simple = simple to understand. Not ‘dumbing it down’. 

    • Genius is explaining something complex simply. 

    • Simplicity is actually complexity * good communication.

    • Simplicity is complexity solved. ETC! 

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4. Model Ability - Deep Dive

The LEGO analogy (FYI analogy is a key ‘5. Communication’ device) 

• I really love the analogy of LEGO for problem solving. I also LOVED LEGO as a kid. 

• Some people can only follow the instruction set to build something: 

• The individual pieces = 1. Knowledge Ingredients

• The instruction set = 4. Model Ability

• For better or worse IMO the vast majority of the traditional Secondary and Tertiary education system is trotting out “1. Knowledge Ingredients” someone else taught you in Solutions someone else taught you. There is no innovation here. 

• Learning about different fields (eg finance, economics, politics, geopolitics, startups, design, management, philosophy, sociology, etc etc) is adding new piece types

  • If you only know about one field (eg maths) you only have eg standard blocks. 

  • Learning about a new field (eg philosophy) is adding the axles. 

  • Then another field (eg economics) is adding glass panels. 

  • Then another field (eg management) is adding wheels.

  • Visual version:

• Comment: 

• The more types of pieces you have (fields of knowledge) the greater the solution possibility set you have. 

• If you want another analogy let’s take food :). Field 1 = vegetables. Field 2 = meat. Field 3 = spices. Field 4 = fruit. Basically the greater the ‘1. Knowledge ingredients’ you have the greater the solution possibility set you have. Knowing every single meat isn’t as important as knowing the major ingredients from each field. 

• IMO you want to be able to: 

  • 1. Make your own new pieces = ‘New “1. Knowledge Ingredients” ’ OR ‘ “3. Transfer” an existing “1. Knowledge Ingredient” into new context”

  • 2. Make your own new instruction sets = “4. Model Ability”

  • Comment:

    • Again I think the existing education system does a poor job of this. 

    • IMO everything be cultivated. Ability to play a video game, ability to read, maths ability, empathy, calm (meditation)... and problem solving ability!  

4. Model Ability

• ‘4. Model Ability’ is your ability to join individual ‘1. Knowledge Ingredients’ together into Solutions. 

• Taxonomy: 

  • L0: Don’t think in models. Just regurgitate rote-learned facts

  • L1: can only use existing models that you know. 

    • IMO one can get 100% on the vast majority of high schools and university subjects with this and 'Transfer L1 - only in the context you learned the knowledge' :(. 

    • Examples of models: 

      • Momentum = Velocity * Mass

      • ICE ranking => Impact, Confidence, Execution

      • PSHE => Problem Solution How Execution

  • L2: can make up 1x new reasoning step for a model. FYI most people really struggle here. 

• L3: can make up 2x new reasoning steps. 

• L4: etc. You ultimately need to be able to build 50 step new sequences of logic. 

  • a big model is now 1000s of cells in a spreadsheet with linking logic and multiple paths :). 

• Comment: 

  • IMO the existing high school education system does not do stuff beyond ‘L1: can only use existing models that you know’

  • The good thing is that I believe it’s possible to systematically teach / build ‘4. Model Ability’ in yourself and others. 

  • For fun: we’ll systematically be building ‘4. Model Ability’ AKA ‘Problem Solving Ability’ AKA ‘Innovation Ability’ in Year 7 Maths. Fun fun! 

Why Modelling is important?

• Without modelling ability you’re not able to solve new problems that haven’t been tackled before

  • This means you can’t help humanity do new things

• Without modelling ability you’re only able to solve problems in the way that they are currently being solved.

  • If you’re only able to operate on L0 or L1, your only options to increase your impact are:

    • Use the existing solution and try and work harder, or work for longer

      • Even if you ignore the constraints of happiness or sleep, your impact has a ceiling as there are only so many hours in the day

    • Try and find other solutions that people have come up with to solve the same problem

      • Not a bad solution but this can be time intense to find what others have done and also makes you reliant on other people to solve the problems first

What is an easier way to do things than creating 100% of things from scratch (aka brute force)? 

• “It’s good to learn from your mistakes, it’s better to learn from others.” 

• Ingest as many ‘1. Knowledge Ingredients’ and ‘Instruction Sets’ from others as you can. 

• Then just modify the instruction set slightly. 

• Example: 

  • Before:

• 5 Year Old Duncan modifications - “standing on the shoulder of giants”

• Step 7 - let’s put a man with a gun on the top of this Jeep. That will be AWESOME!

• Step 8 - Also, what kind of Jeep has 4 wheels? Only sh1t ones. Definitely need to have 6 wheels.

BTW it took me 5 mins to make the 6 wheel Jeep, I’m quite proud of it! 

• Comment: 

  • To get to making the sweet Jeep with 6 wheels and a man with a gun on the top would be 8 step instruction set with many possible pieces per step, ie likely huge number of possibilities. 

  • But adding a dude with a gun on the top and another row of wheels is building something new but wild less amounts of innovation needed.  

  • Basically, a way to ‘hack’ ‘4. Model ability’ is to learn as many ‘instruction sets’ as possible and then just do small modifications to them. 

How to level up your modification skills:

• Learn about instruction sets (models) from multiple different places so that you amass a Latticework of Mental Models

  • The more instruction sets you’ve seen, the more ways to ‘put together pieces’ that you’ll have to draw upon

  • Look for ‘instruction sets’ from different places - from different disciplines, from different countries - the more varied, the better exposure you have!

• Don’t just modify instructions sets, combine them!

  • The more you combine, the more unique the solution you’re going to be able to create

    • Combine instructions/models that usually aren’t used to being brought together!

      • E.g. star wars lego with technic

    • Combine more than just two instruction sets together!

      • Take the best bits of instruction from everywhere!

Why is leveling up modification skills important?

• “Learning without purpose is intellectual mastubation”

  • Learning instruction sets doesn’t necessarily mean that you are good at solving problem

  • There is no point of collecting bunch of instructions if they just sit in a pile on a bookshelf and don’t do anything beyond make you feel smart

• Sure, collecting instruction sets and even making modifications is cool, but unless those creations are doing something, you’re not actually having an impact!

  • I.e. if you’re just learning for the sake of learning

• The only point of learning models is to be able to solve problems

  • The reasoning for learning disparate models and combining them is because they allow you to come up with unique and complex solutions, and that means that you can solve unique and complex problems like working out how to get to space or how to affect global policy change

    • Yes, sometimes you can just start with an approximately similar solution and make modifications hoping for one of them to work (i.e. use brute force)

    • But if you have multiple models, you can more efficiently see what modifications need to be made and how to make them and maybe find a suitable solutions after only 2 or 3 iterations.

  • Anyone can learn models and randomly make changes, far less can intentionally make upgrades to develop a fit for purpose solution to a problem

Ok, back in the real world a little bit more… perhaps the physic(al) world! 

• Newton invented calculus and much other stuff like conservation of mass etc. 

• Also, Newton had a sweet hair do

• People with long greying hair are… DA best! 

• Most of what Newton came up with is taught in secondary school today, does that make you as good a physicist as Newton? I don’t think so. You are standing on the shoulders of those who came before. 

• A person doing a PHD in Physics will hopefully come up with something new that is well beyond anything Newton did… does that make them a better physicist than Newton? I don’t think so. They are standing on the shoulders of those who came before. 

• My learning: 

  • Problem Solving = Innovation Ability = 1. Knowledge ingredients * 2. Recall * 3. Transfer * 4. Model Ability * 5. Communication

  • Read like a banshee. 

    • Ingest everything you can. It’s the best way for “1. Knowledge ingredients”

  • Writing is thinking. 

    • Write all the friggin time, it’s the best way to build “2. Recall * 3. Transfer * 4. Model Ability * 5. Communication”

Everything can be represented in a 3 Dimensional Model and with Pieces and an Instruction Set

• Problem Solving = 1. Pieces * 2. Instruction Set = 3. Solution (outcome of problem solving AKA 3 Dimensional Model)

  • 2. Instruction Set = ‘4. Model Ability’

• LEGO visualisation

• For everything I’ve tried, I’ve been able to represent EVERYTHING in “1. Pieces * 2. Instruction Set = 3. Solution”

• Doing this is so much fun! Best game ever?

• I didn’t use to try and do this, I didn’t use to know one could play ‘turn everything into “1. Pieces * 2. Instruction Set = 3. Solution” ‘, AKA reciprizing! 

• What do I think most people are doing when they ‘read a book’, ‘study for an exam’, ‘talk to someone’, ‘eat a meal’? IMO they are just looking at the ‘3. Solution’

  • If I eat a great meal I think ‘ohh yummy’, I don’t think ‘I can see the ingredients (1. Pieces) used and reverse engineer the recipe to recreate this (2. Instruction Set) yummy meal (3. Solution)’. 

  • IMO when most people are studying they are just trying to memorise the ‘solution’ to know when to trot this out again (ie when they see a question that is similar). 

    • They are not trying to understand why they solution makes sense. Ie they can only see the solution in 1 piece (ie a jeep), they don’t get what pieces are needed to make a Jeep. 

    • Even if they understand the pieces and how they fit together as an end product, they don’t know how to build a Jeep from scratch. 

  • Food equivalent: 

    • The food item (AKA Duncan’s Sunday breakfast :) ) 

      • L1: French Toast - ‘3. Solution’ in one Piece

• L2: An ability to explain the ‘3. Solution’ in many ‘1. Pieces’

• L3: An ‘2. Instruction Set’ to make the solution from scratch which includes a ‘2. Solution’ in many pieces and all the ‘1. Pieces’ you need to make the solution.

• L4: The ability to use the ideas in L3 and modify as you see fit to make wonderful new ‘3. Solutions’. 

• IMO when studying for a Year 12 exam most people are doing ‘L1: remember the solution in one piece’ and then reguitate on queue. 

  • IMO this is equivalent of saying ‘French Toast’ when you get asked ‘what do you want for Breakfast?’ 100% of the time. 

  • Don’t get me wrong, I liked this French Toast, I however don’t want to eat this for breakfast for the rest of my life. It’s rote learning an ‘if/then’ statement. It’s not learning that the JTBD is ‘breakfast’ and that 6 days a week Duncan wants a healthy breakfast and some variety in that. 

• The major modalities: reading, thinking, talking, writing & building

  • When you are reading you can be just “L1: eating the yummy french toast’ or you can be ‘L4: thinking about how to make the French Toast from scratch with ingredients and instruction set and then how you’d improve upon it’. 

  • When you are thinking you can be just “L1: eating the yummy french toast’ or you can be ‘L4: thinking about how to make the French Toast from scratch with ingredients and instruction set and then how you’d improve upon it’. 

  • When you are talking you can be just “L1: eating the yummy french toast’ or you can be ‘L4: thinking about how to make the French Toast from scratch with ingredients and instruction set and then how you’d improve upon it’. 

  • When you are writing you can be just “L1: eating the yummy french toast’ or you can be ‘L4: thinking about how to make the French Toast from scratch with ingredients and instruction set and then how you’d improve upon it’. 

  • When you are building you can be just “L1: eating the yummy french toast’ or you can be ‘L4: thinking about how to make the French Toast from scratch with ingredients and instruction set and then how you’d improve upon it’. 

  • Don’t be shallow and only see the end outcome in one piece. Beauty is on the inside (ie piece and instruction set :) )! Be instructive in how you live! 

Ok, how do you cultivate ‘3. Model Ability’. 

• I’ve got a book for you that will make you great at ‘problem solving’. I wish I read this book so much earlier in my life…

• … just kidding. Haha! 

• If you want to get great at tennis you should… read books about tennis. NO you should spend the majority of your time playing tennis. 

• If you want to get great at poetry you should… read lots of poetry. NO you should spend the majority of your time writing poetry. 

• If you want to get great at screenwriting for TV… you should watch lots of TV. NO you should spend the majority of your time writing screenplays. 

• If you want to get great at problem solving… you should DO LOTS OF PROBLEM SOLVING! 

  • Writing this blog is problem solving. I think I have figured out 20% of what I’ve written here before I started writing. 

  • Writing is thinking! You only have 4 slots of working memory, so any problem that has more than 4 pieces can’t be solved in your mind, you need to ‘get it on paper’ to make progress. 

  • The major modalities: reading, thinking, talking, writing & building. 

    • IMO you can ‘problem solve / innovate’ when you are doing any of the modalities: reading, thinking, talking, writing & building. Ie what is French Toast, what JTBD does it do, how to make great french toast, etc. 

    • OR you can do nothing, ie simply ‘hungry = eat ‘French Toast’ ’

• I don’t know any shortcuts to getting good at anything. You have to put in the work. This doesn’t mean you can’t spend your time badly, but you can’t just ‘suddenly be good at something’ IMO. 

  • An innovation taxonomy I use all the time: 

    • 0 => 1 : there was nothing before, you make something out of nothing! 

    • 1 => 10 : there is something but it’s only just working, needs serious improvements

    • 10+ : something is working, only doing small improvements. 

  • I’ve spent literally 1000s of hours trying to do ‘0 => 1’ and ‘1 => 10’ innovation. 

  • In hindsight I think I’d done less than 10 hour trying to innovate at ‘0 => 1’ and ‘1 => 10’ in my entire life by the end of my University degree. 

  • Why should you be good at something you’ve never tried to do? 

• Innovation vs Learning

  • I learned in the traditional education system. Learning = 1. Known destination + 2. Known path to destination

  • I didn’t do innovation in the traditional education system. Innovation = 1. Unknown destination + 2. Unknown path to destination

  • To be comfortable innovating you must be comfortable wasting lots of time. If you don’t know the destination of the problem you are trying to solve (ie the solution) then you invariably waste lots of energy trying to figure out the solution. 

• I think I spend 20-30 hours a week problem solving / innovating now. That is what this blog is. 

• If you want a place to begin, simply write for 2 hours a week on something you don’t understand as much as you like or about something you want to change / improve. 

Munger: thoughts on how to be the ultimate intellectual companion

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: 

• “As iron sharpens iron, people sharpen people.”

• “The purpose of a friend is to make you better than you would otherwise be.” Socrates.

• “A rising tide lifts all boats.” 

I name the ultimate intellectual companion a ‘Munger’ (after Charlie Munger and his relationship with Warren Buffett). I think that you and your life will be immeasurably better with 2-5x lifelong ‘Mungers’. For me, a ‘Munger’ is far more important than a ‘Romantic Partner’. I’ve nothing against romantic partnerships… indeed one of your ‘Mungers’ could also be your romantic partner. 

What is an ideal ‘Munger’?

• They have minimum sufficient knowledge in all major areas (eg philosophy, economics, politics, science, finance, sociology, etc etc)

• Spend 5+ hours of your week consuming nutritious content (can be in the form of reading, podcasting, audiobook, documentary, etc) 

• Spend 5+ hours of your week writing (this includes writing on work hours for eg new problem solving) 

• You speak with them for 1-20 hours a week

• When you speak you upgrade each other (ie 1+1=3) AND you mutually get energy from the conversations (ie both feel energised at the end and look forward to the next conversation)

• On average you are both upgrading each other more over time than you were, ie 1 hour with each other does more upgrading each year ad infinitum! 

• A ‘Munger’ = the ultimate intellectual companion

• A ‘Munger’ = makes you wiser and happier than you otherwise would have been without them in your life

For reference what do I do?

• 10-20 hours of nutritious content consumption a week (at ~4x speed, so 40-80 hours of 1x speed :) )

• 10-20 hours of writing a week (most of this is for Edrolo / OwlTail, eg strategy, problem solving, recipe creation, etc)

• Done well this is rewarding, energising and life changing :) 

What having a ‘Munger’ does in graphical form: 

• Wisdom

• Life Enjoyment

Where this can be implemented:

In short, everywhere! 

• Problem solving 

• Product design 

• Recipe building

• Process building

• Culture 

• The list is endless

Jingle: at birth most people are taught to look for a romantic partner, I think you should be taught to try to be a ‘Munger’ and to look for  ‘Mungers’ :)! 

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Details

Friends have many purposes, but IMO if you are not meaningfully upgrading at least one other person and yourself you are missing out on one of the best joys of life and a key way to help make the world better. 

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are two of the wisest people I know. 

• For the uninitiated they met when they were ~30 and are now ~90 years old. 

• They are business partners at Berkshire Hathaway (a ~USD $500bn market cap company) and here is a graduation speech from Munger in 2007. 

• IMO Buffett and Munger are two of the wisest people on earth because of the systematic upgrades they have done to each other through their 60 year friendship. They live in different states (Omaha vs California), I think they see each other in person only a few times a year. But they talk all the time, systematically upgrading each other! 

• IMO if they hadn’t met each other they would still be smart, financially successful and wise, but not at one point Buffett being the richest person on earth (currently 3rd I believe) and IMO both in the top 10 wisest people on earth. So the 60 years of up upgrading each other has had a massive impact on where they currently are. 

• Also, from my vantage point, they have enjoyed the sh1t out of life! 

“Acquiring wisdom is a moral duty.” Munger. 

• I believe the growth rate of each other massive increased after meeting each other. 

Buffett and Munger are the best example of ‘intellectual companions’ I’m aware of. 

• As Buffett is the more famous of the two, I’m going to name the ‘ultimate intellectual companion’ a ‘Charlie Munger’... or ‘Munger’ for short. 

• Most people are looking for a romantic partner, I’ve got nothing against a romantic partner. But I think not having one or more ‘Mungers’ in your life will make it meaningfully worse than it would otherwise be. For me, much worse than not having a romantic partner. 

• I don’t want to live with a ‘Munger’. I don’t want to spend every spare moment with a ‘Munger’. However I want to spend 1-20 hours a week every week for the rest of my life with a ‘Munger’. 

• After 30 years of upgrading (Mungering) each other you’ll be so far away from ‘average’ that someone new won’t be able to be a ‘Munger’ as they can’t properly hold a conversation with you to upgrade you (see the details below on conversations). 

• To become Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger you both need to be ‘Mungers’ to each other for 60 years. It doesn’t work if only one side is a ‘Munger’. 

• Warren Buffett is also very good friends with Bill Gates, I’d say that Gates is another ‘Munger’ for Buffett. Buffett has a buffet of ‘Mungers’. Life can and IMO should have multiple ‘Mungers’… no need to be monogamous with ‘Mungers’!

• If you don’t Munger others, and have others Munger you, your life could well be buggered. Don’t have a mongrel of a life, have a Munger of a life! 

Most people are looking for one lifelong majority romantic partner (ie they spend a majority of their spare time with 1x person).  

I’m after 2-5 minority (ie 1-20 hours a week) life long ultimate intellectual companions (‘Mungers’). 

So what is a ‘Charlie Munger’?

• Someone who systematically adds wisdom to themselves (Lens 1 - time needed to be a ‘Munger’)

• Someone who systematically adds wisdom to others (Lens 2 - how to do ‘inter-thinking’ well)

Lens 1 - optimal time needed to be a ‘Munger’ (adding wisdom to yourself)

• Nutritious content consumption for 5+ hours each week - ingredient gathering

  • Reads broadly, aka has minimum sufficient knowledge in all major areas (eg philosophy, economics, politics, science, finance, sociology, etc etc)

  • Reads to open their mind, not close their mind (see ‘Strong beliefs held loosely… and multiple beliefs held harmoniously’)

  • While reading builds mental models with the knowledge they are acquiring. Eg layering together distention schools of thought. Eg Treasure Taxonomy. Eg Explaining with equations is enlightening.

• Writing for 5+ hours each week - creating new ingredients yourself

  • Writing is thinking. When you write you join ideas (ingredients from others) together into new ingredients and you also figure out where pieces from a puzzle you are trying to solve are missing (ie where you need to invent new ingredients). 

  • You solve complexity through simplicity. 

• Inter-thinking 5%+ each week - working with others to create new ingredients and upgrade each other

  • Quality collaboration = “1+1=3+” = inter-thinking = discourse = positive sum

    • Your minds meld in a way that creates an emergent layer that allows a possibility set not possible individually. 

  • Discussion = zero zum = “1+1=2”

  • Debate = negative sum = “1+1<2” = most of today's political interactions :(. 

Comment

• The average person works for 8 hours a day and watches 4 hours of TV / Netflix / Youtube / etc. So that is 12 hours a day. You can do this. Not only can it be done. It is fun. 

Lens 2 - how to do ‘inter-thinking’ well (adding wisdom to others)

• I love this model from Ray Dalio about conversations.

• The analogy that I attach to this is one of ‘tennis’. Conversations = tennis

• Inter-thinking = 1. Starting new rallies + 2. Returning the ball well + 3. Finishing the rally well

  • 1. Start new rallies = (reading + writing) * thinking in models = bringing new ideas / ingredients to the table

    • This is the top level, ie the ‘letters’ in the model above.

• Some people don’t bring any new rallies to the table. To be a ‘Munger’ you need to start conversations (rallies) that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. 

• If you only return the ball (ie respond to a conversation started by another) you aren’t upgrading nearly as much as you could. 

• 2. Returning ball = 2.1 Stress testing the idea + 2.2 Adding to the idea (eg by thinking in models or joining on new ingredients) * 2.3 The way you return the ball

  • Returning ball taxonomy: 

    • L0: cannot return the ball (idea / ingredient) you hit to them. They don’t have enough knowledge to access the idea / conversation.

    • L1: can return ball but only mildly level up the conversation and can only do it in a few areas (eg if you are a Humanities teacher will only be able to conversations about Humanities)

    • L2: can improve the rally  by ‘2.1 Stress testing the idea’. Can do this for almost any idea. This is different to starting new rallies, but it means one can productively add value in basically any rally. 

    • L3: L2 + ‘2.2 Adding to the idea (eg by thinking in models or joining onto new ingredients)’

    • Comment: 

      • The best people can talk about anything, can level up the idea inside the box (ie with the ingredients others have provided) AND add new ingredients that weren’t already part of the rally (conversation). 

      • IMO the best way to be able to do this is to read and write in equal measures. 

  • 2.3 The way you return the ball

    • Your tone matters hugely, AKA “3. The energy you bring to the conversation”

    • But also understanding the difference between ‘Facts vs Ideas’. For Ideas there is never a right / wrong (eg what is the best immigration policy, what is the best way to live one's life). If you are pushing back on what someone is saying, it is not an attack on them as a person, but an attempt to upgrade the idea. 

• 3. Finishing the rally well = 3.1 Synthesis well + 3.2 Don’t segway into endless other ‘ideas’ and never complete something. 

• Some people can hit a ball back but cannot synthesize to save themselves. 

• Synthesis taxonomy: 

  • L0: cannot synthesize. People like this can be useful in a conversation as they have ingredients that their experience has given them that one needs for a problem. Their role is to add necessary ingredients to solve a certain problem set. 

  • L1: can synthesize but only with the ingredients that surfaced as part of the rally / conversation

  • L2: L1 + can add in external ingredients as well. 

  • Comment: 

    • IMO the best way to get good at synthesizing is through writing (eg a big part of blogging for me is building synthesis skill). 

    • IMO the best way to get good at adding new ingredients is through reading. 

• Comment: a Munger is top shelf in all of “Inter-thinking = 1. Starting new rallies + 2. Returning the ball well + 3. Finishing the rally well”

“The more you know about anything, the more interesting it is.”

• If you know nothing about something (eg politics, eg sport) it doesn’t make sense and as such is boring. 

• But the more you know about something the more interest potential it has. 

  • Eg 15 year old Duncan couldn’t think of anything worse than politics. 35 year old Duncan can’t get enough of US politics and the Hong Kong situation. 

  • Eg writing a maths question 5 years ago was a boring repetitive task. Now making a maths question is problem solving of the highest order, it is ART! All maths questions used to look the same to me, now I’ve ‘cultivated my eye / maths question problem solving ability’ to the point where some maths questions make me shed a tear from the beauty and some maths questions make me vomit a little in my mouth from the ugliness. 5 years ago Duncan couldn’t tell the difference between a beautiful and ugly maths question, I thought they were exactly the same! What a dumb dumb 5 years ago Duncan was! 

• “What you can learn is a function of what you know. Ie the more you know the more you can learn.” IMO there is no limit to how good a ‘Munger’ you can be, there is no limit to the amount of upgrading you can do to others AND the reward you can get from upgrading others. The bigger the upgrade you have provided the better you should feel. 

  • So basically, done well you get better and better at giving other upgrades. Ie being a ‘Munger’ only ever becomes more fun. 

• A good ‘Munger’ is like a top shelf whiskey, it gets better with age! 

If you only take away one thing:

• “Every year of your life should be the best year of your life.” 

• IMO one key way for this to be possible is to be a top shelf Munger, ie someone who gets better at providing upgrades to others with age. 

• IMO be a ‘Munger’ for others, and have 2-5 people be ‘Mungers’ for you! 

Terrific vs Terrible Teams

By Hannah Liu, Rex Roseman and Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Job To Be Done:

• To define what a good team looks like

• To explain why we should strive to be the best team we can possibly be

• To show why you should want to part of a good team

One sentence summary:

• A terrific team is better than the sum of its parts, and results in individual growth and team growth, as well as being a hugely enjoyable thing!

Overview:

• A team is historically a group of people working towards a common goal

• This doesn’t actually mean that the team is a good team. A terrific team reaps huge benefits for the individuals and the group, but this doesn’t automatically happen.

• Group assignments at uni notoriously cause horrific thoughts. We’ve all been there. This is an example of a terrible team.

• Team Taxonomy: 

  • Terrific team = 1. Individuals grow faster than they would if they weren’t part of the team + 2. Team members interact better with each other year on year meaning team level inter-productivity improves

  • Average team = 1. Individuals growth is what it would be by themselves (ie team is adding no extra growth to the individual) + 2. Team members do not improve at interacting with each other year on year (ie flat team level inter-productivity)

  • Terrible team = 1. Individuals grow slower than they would by themselves because of interference from the team + 2. Team level inter-productivity drops year on year as team members ‘grate’ against each other.

• There is no limit to how terrific (or terrible) a team can be. Try being terrific… it can be terribly good fun!

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Details

Emergence:

• Emergence (video link)  is a concept traceable as far back as Aristotle. The term was coined by G. H. Lewes in 1875

• In a regular mathematical equation, the variables equal the resultant. Great teams break maths.

• Some maths:

  • Terrible team = 1 + 1 = <2

  • Average team = 1 + 1 = 2

  • Terrific team = 1 + 1 = >2

• Some sports quotes:

  • "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." --Michael Jordan

  • “No individual can win a game by himself.” --Pelé

  • "The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team." --Phil Jackson

• In each of these quotes, something bigger than just the group of people is being talked about

• A good team is greater than the sum of its parts. An emergent team is able to do things beyond the capability of its parts

Terrific vs Average vs Terrible teams:

• Equation

  • Team = 1. Team multiplier (1.1 Problem solving ability + 1.2 Output ability + 1.3 Ability to support each other + 1.4 Enjoyment) * 2. Ability to upgrade/grow (2.1 As an individual + 2.2 As a team)

    • When a team works well together, we have greater solution sets, see more ego distortions and blind spots, and are more productive with greater quality. They continuously are growing together. Strong teams are able to eliminate key person risk, support each other through difficult periods and celebrate wins together. 

• Individual level

  • Terrific team = your personal growth rate is greater than what it would be if you were by yourself

  • Average team = your personal growth rate is the same as what it would be if you were by yourself

  • Terrible team = your personal growth rate is the less as what it would be if you were by yourself

• Team level

  • Terrific team = team output growth rate accelerates Year on Year

  • Average team = team output growth rate is flat Year on Year

  • Terrible team = team output does not grow Year on Year

Outcome:

• Terrific team: you are super grateful to be part of the team and would sacrifice to keep it together = energising 

• Average team: you are indifferent about being part of the team = neutral

• Terrible team: get me out of here, these people are doing my head in = draining

Equation:

• Team = 1. Team multiplier (1.1 Problem solving ability + 1.2 Output ability + 1.3 Ability to support each other + 1.4 Enjoyment) * 2. Ability to upgrade/grow (2.1 As an individual + 2.2 As a team)

  • Understanding how as a team grows you can get more done with each person added is KEY IMO!

• 1.1 Problem solving ability = 1.1.1 the ingredients you have + 1.1.2 the lens you view things from + 1.1.3 the blindspots we have

  • When you’re problem solving with a terrific team, you springboard off each other and come up with a solution that is more creative, more holistic, covers more bases and is better than what any of you could do individually.

  • As individuals, our solution set is limited by ourselves. As a team, our solution set expands and builds upon each otherbw

• 1.2 Output ability = 1.2.1 the skills we have + 1.2.2 the resourcing we have

  • Ideally, each person that is in a team results in >1x unit of output. This is how 1+1=3

  • Bad team: each incremental person added is less than 1x extra person’s output. 

    • Someone said that if Ithings aren’t working out in a team, the (somewhat counterintuitive) solution is to remove someone. In bad teams, where people aren’t collaborating well, this solution will result in a better outcome

  • Average team: each incremental person added is 1x extra person’s output. 

  • Great team: each incremental person added is >1x extra person’s output

    • Team members enhance each others skills, resulting in greater output. 

    • Team members complement each other and there is no key person risk as team members are proficient in multiple disciplines. This means the team is able to load balance

• 1.3. Ability to support each other = 1.3.1 emotionally support one another + 1.3.2 help cover each other’s workload when required

  • When you have a terrific team, the trust is there to be able to be candid with one another

  • A great team has team members who are able to support each other appropriately as required

    • See push, support, leave, intervene blog

  • In most industries, there are always periods that are more difficult, either in workload amount or timelines. The stress of these times can be dampened when you have a supportive team who stand up together 

• 1.4 Enjoyability = 1.4.1 fun with your work + 1.4.2 fun with your colleagues

  • When you have a great team, you look forward to working together. 

  • In any sort of team, there are ups and downs. In sport teams, in work teams, in music teams, in friendships. Hopefully you have a team with positive sentiment override though!

  • If you do, you’re essentially ensuring enjoyability. This is a pretty epic thing!

    • It’s not just the outcomes that are positive, but the overall process is fun as well

  • So if you have a great team, you have a great time together too! Bonus! 

• 2. Ability to upgrade/grow

  • When you have a terrific team, the trajectory of the team member’s growth increases drastically.

  • This is both at an individual level, and overall as a team

  • When you learn more, you’re able to make more connections, which exponentially increases your growth. Good teams create an environment where this thrives

Conclusion:

• “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

• I honestly believe there’s nothing better than being part of a terrific team: the camaraderie, the shared vision, and dedication in working together to make greatness happen

• When you’re part of a great team, it barely seems like work because you enjoy and want to interact with everyone. You know that you’re part of something special that makes all of you better than you would otherwise be. You’re able to achieve things that you can’t even fathom at the beginning.

• “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.” --Henry Ford

• “No journey is long with good company”... so let’s build a good company!

It's not “I'm right, you’re wrong”, it's “oh, you have a different view to me, how can I learn from you!”

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: 

• Our views can change and expand as we learn more information

• If someone has a different view to me it's not “they are wrong and stupid”, it's “ohh goodie, an opportunity to learn something!” 

• Speaking to someone is an opportunity to learn. 

• Jingle: who learns most wins!

When speaking to someone I try to: 

• 1. Try to understand what their view is

• 2. Try to understand their justifications

• 3. Try to get the historical context as to how they arrived at their view. 

• 4. Try to get their personal context. Eg left leaning blah blah. 

I try not to: I'm right and they are wrong and stupid

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Details

Facts vs Ideas (views) lens:

• Facts = there is a right / wrong answer. EG today is Monday, EG the coffee costs $4

• Ideas = there is no right / wrong answer, only different view points that can be updated. EG how to best spend Monday, EG how to make the best coffee. 

  • Some contentious Ideas with different views: what is the best immigration policy? What is the best Climate Change policy? 

  • Views on Ideas can be changed and upgraded, both by developments in the world (e.g. new discoveries in the science behind climate change) and by exposure to different views and experiences (e.g. speaking to someone who’s lost their home because of climate-change-induced flooding). 

• “You get to choose your views on Ideas, you don’t get to choose your facts.” 

• Jingle: As a view can never not be updated / improved (ie there is never a right / wrong), the only thing you can be right about is that you are wrong! 

Options for how to interact with others:

• -L2: I'm right and they are wrong and evil

• -L1: I'm right and they are wrong and stupid

• L0: I'm right and they are wrong

• L1: I'm right but let's listen to them all the same

• L2: I realise that my current view on this Idea is just that, a current view and I'm trying to update it. Speaking to others done well is a way to try and update my thoughts and their thoughts

• L3: L2 + I'm trying to understand their view and the justifications they have for it

• L4: L3 + how did they come to their current view

• L5: L4 + their context (eg grew up with heavily religious parents)

• L6: L5 + my own context (eg how have my own biases and experiences shaped my view in a way I wasn’t aware of before?) 

• Comment: 

  • Basically speaking to people well is a puzzle, you are trying to understand as much about them as possible, I find that doing this is a beautiful orthogonal way to stress test and update your views. 

    • You’ll also understand more about yourself as a result! 

  • Done well, finding people with a different point of view to you is an opportunity for an energising interaction. 

  • Done poorly, finding people with a different point of view to you is ‘exactly what is wrong with the world’ and time for a draining interaction. 

20 year old Duncan: 

• Discussions were word war where one viewpoint would be crowned victor. 

• Don't try to do L6 from above. Just try to break their argument. 

• IMO this is a draining negative sum exercise in confirmation bias and strawmanning. 

• Let's also call this your average ABC Q and A discussion ;P. 

What 35 year old Duncan tries to do:

• If I find someone with a different view 

  • 1. Try to understand what the view is

  • 2. Try to understand their justifications

  • 3. Try to get the historical context as to how they arrived at their view. 

  • 4. Try to get their personal context. Eg left leaning blah blah. 

• Comment: 

  • This puzzle is the best fun! 

  • IMO a skill of the highest order: “trying to talk to someone and provoke thought in a way that will allow them to change their mind… while also being open to the idea that you are perhaps the one who needs to change your mind!”

  • I'm not trying to tell them why they are right / wrong, I'm trying to understand their view and them. If I can do this, IMO then we have the basis for a quality discussion :)

“If you walk with two people, a good person and a bad person. Both can be your teacher, what to do and what not to do.”

• At the end of this I might learn why I don't agree with someone. That's a great outcome. 

  • My understanding of their view has improved, and hopefully my understanding of how I arrived at my own view has also improved. My overall understanding of the nuances of the topic has expanded. 

  • As a result I might have changed my view! 

• As long as I’ve learned something, I’ve not pissed them off and I’m not pissed off; then I’m a happy boy! 

  • No one pissed off + Learned something = Happy Duncan :) 

Make excellence an unconscious habit

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: 

• "First you make your habits, then your habits make you."

• Put in the (short-term) effort to make something effortless (in the long term)

Overview

Scholars of expertise have described four stages of learning: 

• unconscious incompetence (you don’t know what you don’t know), 

• conscious incompetence (you know what you don’t know), 

• conscious competence (you can do something but only by thinking about it), and, finally, 

• unconscious competence (you can do it automatically).  

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ” —Aristotle.

• If I want to get good at something I try to figure out 'what habit I need to build'. 

• Then I build systems to make sure I do the action until it becomes an 'unconscious habit'. 

• A good habit is an ‘upgrade’. A bad habit is a ‘downgrade’... some habits are obviously bad… but the worst are habits you think are good, build into an ‘unconscious habit’ and then spend years doing only to realise later that you now feel the habit has been counterproductive (ie a downgrade masquerading as an upgrade)! 

Taxonomy of trying:

• L1: No upgrade you are trying to make

• L2: Upgrade you trying to make but not understanding the action you need to cultivate to make the upgrade an ‘unconscious habit’. 

• L3: A system to turn the desired action into a habit

Jingle: Make excellence an unconscious habit. Hoping that you will change is not a strategy! 

“Your mind is a place for having ideas, not stories ideas.”

• I have many different systems for outsourcing memory. The goal is to never need to remember anything. This is one of the best gifts you can give yourself, freedom from the anxiety of ‘is there something I needed to do?’

• The simplest system I have for setting a new habit is simply a Google / Apple reminder each morning to ‘do activity x’. 

No one gets to tell you what you like, you get to choose. 

• I think you can choose your habits. 

• Making sure I’m cultivating 1-2 habits at a time I’ve found to be one of the best ways to build the life I want and attempt to become the person I want to be. 

• How much of a difference can cultivating 1-2 habits at a time make? IMO this is actually 10-50 new habits a year, this is a F@#$ ton! The effect of habits also compound. Eg IMO 5x of the right habits over 50 years likely make the difference between a stupendous life and a sh1t one ;)! 

• Don’t be a slave to your impulses, don’t be a run by your external environment… build an effortless wonderful life (ie one full of unconscious healthy habits)!

• I used to find building new ‘subconscious habits’ very hard, now the bigger problem is ‘what habit to build’... and undoing some habits I built in the past when I thought they were a good idea (eg working too many hours).

+++++++++++++++++++

Example 1: metacognition -  thinking about one's thinking

• "You do not learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences." 

• Problem solving is itself a problem to solve… IMO problem solving is the biggest problem to solve there is. 

• After each problem solving session that is 0.5 hours + I now reflect on how I went about solving the problem (ie not the conclusion, but how I came to the conclusion). 

• It's more important to me to understand how I got to a solution and thereby be able to upgrade 'problem solving' than what the actual solution is. 

• I do this by writing a reflection on metacognition after each significant problem solving session. There are infinite ways to do this, here is a recent framework 

• How to build metacognition reflection into an ‘unconscious habit’?

• Occam’s Razor: the more simple a solution the better :) 

• I simply set a reminder at the start and end of each day saying “have you reflected on metacognition?”

• After a while it becomes an 'unconscious habit', I automatically reflect on metacognition at the end of problem solving sessions. 

• Once this has happened I kill the 'daily reminder'. 

How many times have you had thought ‘that is a good idea, I must remember to do that in the future’... then promptly just moved on? Instead of promptly moving on I try to build a prompt (reminder) to cultivate an unconscious habit!

Example 2: No direct brain mouth connection

• I’ve seen two types of problems when people are part of a discussion: 1. Don’t say something when they should have or 2. Don’t consider things before they say them there by saying things they shouldn’t have (ie a direct brain-mouth connection).

• My process for figuring out what to say = 1. Try to disqualify thought * 2. Articulate thought with the appropriate length

  • 1. Try to disqualify thought = In a discussion I try disqualify any thoughts before I say them. As a general rule of thumb if I’d like to be disqualifying well more than 50% of the thoughts I have from being said. 

  • 2. Articulate thought with the appropriate length = should this be a Small (1-2 sentences), Medium (~1x paragraph) or Large (get up and draw something on a whiteboard). 

• IMO the point of a discussion is not to hear your thoughts aloud, it is to help improve an idea as a team. 

• How to build ‘no direct brain mouth connection’?

  • I simply set a reminder at the start and end of each day saying “no direct brain mouth connection”.

  • After a while it becomes an 'unconscious habit', I automatically reflect on metacognition at the end of problem solving sessions. 

  • Once this has happened I kill the 'daily reminder'. 

That’s it people! 

Making games together > playing games alone

By Duncan Anderson and Kat Gentry. To see all blogs click here.

Summary:

1. Independent innovation 

   • Your life is yours to live as you wish. Be in control of your choices. Make your own game.

2. Emergence

   • Good friendships make you better than you otherwise would have been. Good teams do things individuals could not do independently.

3. Expansion

   • If you combine the power of independent innovation (1) with emergence (2), both the individual and the team grow way more than they otherwise would.

Prior watching (7 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16W7c0mb-rE

Analogies: 

• Life isn’t about ordering from the menu well; it’s about making new items for the menu!

• Life isn’t about playing ‘the Chess game of life’ well; it’s about making a new board, new pieces and new moves!

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Details

1. Independent innovation. 

Your life is yours to live as you wish. Be in control of your choices. Make your own game.

Almost nothing we do today has anything to do with what humans did even just 500 years ago.  

• The vast majority of what you are doing was made up by other humans… this means you get to make up what you do too!!! 

• You don’t have to spend all day hunting and gathering so you don’t starve. You don’t have to procreate as soon as possible and as much as possible to make sure the human race doesn’t die out. 

• You can do whatever you want.

What 15 year old Duncan thought: 

• There is a set menu in life: one could be an accountant, a lawyer, an engineer, a teacher etc. 

• People were born with different innate interests. 

• As such: Good Life = 1. Figure out your innate interests * 2. Order well from the menu.

• IMO this is playing someone else’s game. 

What 35 year old Duncan thinks:

• Life isn’t about ordering from the menu well; it’s about making new items for the menu!

• Life isn’t about playing ‘the Chess game of life’ well; it’s about making a new board, new pieces and new moves!

• IMO the more you know about most things the more interesting they are. Eg knowing more about sport makes it more interesting. Eg knowing more about wine makes it more interesting. Eg knowing more about education makes it more interesting. Eg knowing more about design makes it more interesting. 

• One is born knowing nothing so nothing is interesting. Ie you have no innate interests. Are you bored? Try learning about something and then talk to people about it! 

  • “The world is inherently interesting. If you think it’s boring, it's because you don’t understand it, not because it is uninteresting.”

  • I went from knowing stuff all about the world as a 15 year old and as such almost everything being ‘boring’. Slowly I’ve learned more and more about the world, now I know some stuff about all parts of the world, and slowly everything has become more and more interesting! 

  • This is one of the best magic tricks I know of!!!!!!!!!!!!  Imagine if everything could be interesting… well IMO almost anything can!

• As such: Good Life = 1. Learn about the world and thereby continually build your interests * 2. More about making new items for the menu and ordering off the new menu

• IMO this is building and playing your own game. 

What will 55 year old Duncan think? 

• NFI, but I’m assuming it will be massively different to 35 year old Duncan! 

“Work is the best of times, work is the worst of times.”

• I work with a computer at a desk. From the outside what I do looks exactly the same as what I was doing 5 years ago. However it’s wildly beyond the best thing I could conceive 5 years ago. IMO words don’t exist to describe what I feel I do for work, hence Maslatonic Eudication. 

• Sometimes I think of the world through this lens: 

  • Happiness can be biology led: eg eat chocolate are happy, get massage are happy. Or, 

  • Happiness can be thought led: eg get and A on a test are happy, eg win sport game are happy. 

• IMO one can create stories that make the best and worst feelings and the most meaning you've ever experienced. 

  • Eg Win the AFL Grand final and cry tears of happiness. Lose the Grand final and cry tears of sadness. 

  • This is all totally made up, has zero to do with what humans were doing 500 years ago. This is thought led happiness / sadness.

  • What you do with great partners? You invent new games (eg AFL) and you get to win the Grand Final every day!

  • Plus you get to constantly invent and play new and better games. 

  • Jingle: Don’t be stuck with the game society gave you, make your own game! Haters gonna hate, players gonna play, and inventors gonna make new better games! 

• At work IMO you can build stories that give you the best and worst feelings you have ever experienced.

• Personal story: 

  • Now I think that I can build whatever job I want. My ‘job’ is making the job that I want to do. A good friend / partner is someone who makes new games, puts new items on the menu, makes me better… And that I laugh with. The value I can get out of work isn't like a good day at school or university, it's if far far far beyond the best thing I could comprehend. A good friend now isn't like what a good friend was when I was 20. It's everything that a good friendship at 20 was plus mega amounts more that were beyond my wildest ability to comprehend. A good friendship at 20 now makes up about 5% of goodness I now get from a good friendship. 

  • My life isn't the best thing I could conceive of as a 20 year old… It's wildly better than better than anything I could imagine at the time I was 20. 

  • While from the outside my job looks the same, ie Duncan working at a desk with a laptop, what I do now I wasn't able to do 5 years ago. It's not that it would have taken longer or would have been worse quality, what I do for work today is IMO an order of magnitude better than the best thing I could do at work 5 years ago. It's like saying I was thinking about sand castles 5 years ago and now trying to build the internet. 

2. Emergence

Good friendships make you better than you otherwise would have been. Good teams do things individuals could not do independently.

“People are the best of times, people are the worst of times.”

• “The purpose of a friend (partner) is to make you better than you otherwise would have been.” Socrates

• IMO learning about 90%+ of things makes them more interesting. 

• You learn much better if you have an intellectual companion. 

• You + another good person = both parties are upgraded more than they would have been by themselves. 

  • This is proper mutually positive sum stuff (see Partnership Economics). 

• To be clear, it’s about ultimately creating new levels that don't exist. It’s about creating new menu items, it’s about new moves for pieces, about new pieces and new boards! 

• Example: 

  • Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are two of the wisest people I know of. 

    • They probably already had the mindset of ‘I will make my own game, thank you very much’ before they met each other

  • They met each other 60 years ago and started systematically upgrading each other. They have been at upgrading each other for 60 years! 

• If they didn’t meet each other they still be smart well read people, but IMO they wouldn’t be two of the wisest people on earth if they DIDN’T meet each other and systematically upgrade each other. 

• Outcome: 

  • This is making a new menu item to order: friendships that upgrade each other! 

  • 15 year old Duncan had no idea that one could systematically upgrade yourself and others. 

  • And if I somehow did know about this I probably would have thought ‘eww, yuck, sounds like secondary school. How about I NOT do this with my friends!’

  • Now 100% of work ‘friendships’ / partnerships have upgrading each other and 75% of non-work friendships. 

  • Done well, I’ve found the menu item of upgrading yourself and others makes things so much more interesting, so much more rewarding, yay! 

• Friendship Taxonomy: 

  • Downside life circumstances (eg get sick someone will be there for you)

  • Loneliness

  • Companionship / sharing interest / children raising alone

  • Building something together

  • [new level / menu item] Growing each other

  • [new level / menu item] Creating new mental planes that don't exist. Eg IMO the way we now talk about education at Edrolo isn’t the best I could imagine 2 years ago, it’s way beyond my best possible conception :)!

3. Expansion

If you combine the power of independent innovation (1) with emergence (2), both the individual and the team grow way more than they otherwise would.

There are 100 billion neurons in a human brain. They are yours to do with as you wish. By working with a person who is also 'making up the game' you do not just add another 100 billion neurons to the equation. You can essentially make 100 billion * 100 billion new connections that would never have been made if you hadn't worked together.

Expansion of the analogies… that leads to expansion: 

• The Chess analogy in choice detail: 

  • If you are playing Chess there is the board, the pieces and the moves they can do. IMO most people are just trying to play the game in front of them well.

  • I stayed off by making up some new moves for pieces. 

  • Now I try to make new boards, new pieces and new moves. 

  • It's honestly the best fun ever.

  • IMO to have the most rewarding game, play with others, not a single player game. 

  • But also have others make the board, the pieces and the moves too! 

  • IMO there is no limit to the games you can create. IMO your mind is unconstrained for empathy, creativity / problem solving and communication. 

  • This means you can give yourself and others the best feeling they have ever had (winning the Grand final). 

  • And tomorrow you make a better game with a new high water mark and again you give each other the best feeling they have ever had. 

• The Menu analogy in more detail: 

  • Most people are just ordering what is on the menu. IMO life is much more about making the menu.

  • Today I made a new menu with items that are better than ever before. 

  • Then I ordered theses items and had the best feeling I've ever had. 

  • Tomorrow I'm going to make a new menu with ever better items… Ad infinitum.

  • Then show friends how to not order off the menu, and help them create their own menus

  • Then make a super-epic menu together 

Taxonomy:

• 1: Play chess alone

• 2. Play chess together

• 3. Make your own new game and play it

  • Benefits you

    • various second order consequences depending on your actions

• 4. Make a new game with others and play it

  • Benefits you and your team

    • various second order consequences depending on your actions

• 5. Make a new game with others that increases human capital, and play it

  • Benefits you, your team, and the world

Making games together > playing games alone

If there was one thing to take away: 

• IMO you can be in the driver's seat. Try making a new menu item / board piece. 

• And if you don’t have inspiration for making a new item them try learning about something with someone, eg the thing with the most attention in the news media for example the Hong Kong protests. I find that inspiration comes from learning! 

How meditation can upgrade your mind and life

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

One sentence summary: meditation has been a key way to upgrade my mind and therefore my life. 

Overview

• I view meditation as a ‘foundational life element’. 

• Foundational life elements are things I don’t compromise on. They are the foundational pieces upon which all else is built. 

  • If you don’t sleep well you’ll get through life but life will be shorter and sh1tter. 

  • If you don’t eat well you’ll get through life but life will be shorter and sh1tter. 

  • If you don’t exercise well you’ll get through life but life will be shorter and sh1tter. 

  • And… if you don’t meditate well you’ll get through life but life will be shorter and sh1tter. 

Meditation = give our minds a break

Meditation = calm

Meditation = focus

Meditation = gain emotional awareness of ourselves

Meditation = reset our emotions

Meditation = gives us the ability to stop thinking about something

Meditation = gives us the ability to think about what you want

There are thousands of peer reviewed academic research pieces extolling the virtues of meditation. 

I’m a decently data driven dude. 20 year old Duncan thought meditation was some weird hippy religious crap. 35 year old Duncan now sees meditation as a core way to upgrade my mind and improve my life. 

Jingle: Meditation = marvellous mind moulding

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Details

What is meditation?

• The most common form of meditation is simply focusing on your breath for eg 10 mins. 

• You simply focus on breathing in and out. 

• When your mind drifts from focusing on your breath you bring your attention gently back to focusing on your breath. 

• Many types of meditation are focusing on something. Eg a mantra, a body scan, eating a piece of food, etc. So they are substituting breath focus for focus on something else. 

• What the hell can this do for you? Focusing on your breath for 10 mins a day is somehow going to change my life? Actually, I think the answer is yes. 

What do I think are 2nd order outcomes from meditation? 

• Meditation = practicing calm

  • By eg focusing on your breath you are able to let go of whatever is going on in your head. 

  • Are you are ‘building your calm capabilities’. Then if the seas get rough you can bring out your cultivated calmness and dampen everything!

• Meditation = emotional awareness

  • “You don’t learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.” 

  • By focusing on your breath you are able to let go of what is going on in your head and thereby realise what was going on in your head. The number of times meditating I’ll realise part the way through meditating that ‘man I was really amped up’ or ‘wow, I was frustrated’, how come I didn’t realise this before? Is disconcerting. 

  • Slowly over time because of meditation i’m getting better at emotional self awareness. 

  • Increased emotional awareness in yourself => increased emotional awareness of others

• Meditation = overall calmer state = 1. Better at being calm * 2. Better at emotional awareness

  • Calm = one foot in front of the other, not unnecessarily expending energy

  • Calm = take the time to be creative

  • Calm = better to yourself

  • Calm = better for others to work with

• Focus = Attention - Distractions

  • Meditation = practicing attention on one thing (eg your breath)

    • Getting better at focus helps everything. 

    • “So few people are actually training their ability to concentrate that if you’re one of the few to do so, you have a huge competitive advantage” - Cal Newport

  • Meditation = less distracted

  • Meditation = can give your energy more to what you want

  • Meditation = increasing your ability to be present 

• More present => increased awareness in the moment of what is going on => increased ability to Respond, not React 

  • Meditation = a way to start to respond more

• Meditation = a way to stop thinking about something

  • I don’t know about you but my mind has a mind of its own! Sometimes the more I want to stop thinking about something the more I think about it :(. 

  • Meditation = concentrating on breath and thereby stopping thinking about anything else. It’s increasing your ability to let go of things. 

  • Sometimes you need to be thinking about a problem. But you don’t need to be thinking about a problem all the time. Imagine if you were just to say ‘I’m going to worry about that problem later’ and were able to do it! Well IMO meditation really helps with this. 

• Meditation = a self administered mood change

• Ever in a bad mood and then you watch your favourite TV show and at the end your mood is now relaxed, calm and happy? well I find meditation can do this for me in 10 minutes. 

• Ever in a bad mood and then you play your favourite happy song and at the end your mood is totally different? well I find meditation can do this for me in 10 minutes. 

• In short IMO meditation is an essential tool to live a good life. Meditation is an essential tool to upgrade your mind. 

2c on how to start meditating? 

• Smiling Mind app

• Sam Harris Waking Up App

• HeadSpace app

• Read “Wherever you go there you are.”

• Read “Why Buddhism is true.”

• Comment: 

  • When I first tried meditation (2011) I sucked at it so bad. I was literally more stressed at the end than at the start because I thought after that ‘I could have done anything else and been more productive than this’. 

  • I hope that I’m better and better at meditation each year. I’d consider myself proficient after 8 years of trying this! 

  • The first few times you try it,  expect to feel like nothing is happening and for you to feel more anxious at the end of meditating than when you start. But  don’t give up. 

++++++++++++++++

Addendum

I quite like this part so I’m going to include it… I normally try to junk 50% of what I write as if I’m not doing this then ‘I’m not editing properly’. But you can get this as a bit of extra fun! 

“For the vast history of the human species, boredom was a fact of life. There was no television, no smartphones, no cars, no 24/7 businesses, or even fulfilling jobs. We also lived in tribes of 150 people (dunbar’s number), there isn’t much gossip with 150 people. 

 Even when life was much harder and more dangerous—like for hunter gatherers—boredom would have been constant. Research shows that hunter gatherers work on average 20 hours per week to provide subsistence levels of food for themselves. That’s a lot of time sitting around, particularly for kids too young to do much in the way of contributing.

But flash forward to today and we have utterly banished boredom. We have social media. We have iPads to stream Netfliex in the car. We have jam packed schedules so we’re never not doing anything. This can’t possibly be natural!”

If you want to be healthy, live how humans used to live.

• Eat how they ate (mostly vegetables, just 200-500g of meat a week, many humans eat that a day now. You can get by on no meat, but humans did eat it)

• Exercise how they exercised (natural movement, not training for the olympics (ie pushing body to limits). Varied exercise, not just running)

• And let your mind have much time being ‘bored’. 

Your mind is used to having significant downtime. It’s not used to constantly being fed something. 

• Boredom done well = relaxation. 

• Boredom done well = calm and peace. 

• Boredom done poorly = anxiety. 

• Meditation done well = relaxation. 

• Meditation done well = calm. 

For machines downtime is a bug, for humans it’s a feature. 

• One analogy I like is that meditation is like stretching for your mind. 

• If you spend all your time exercising and don’t stretch you’ll get cramps / injuries. 

• If you spend all your time doing something with your mind exercising eg working or feeding it something (instagram, netflix, speaking to people) you’ll give it cramps and injuries. 

• In hunter gatherer times there were hours a day of ‘natural meditation’ built in. You didn’t have anything to say. 

They say that english today has 750k words, that english 1000 years ago had 50-75k words, and that dogs have 12 words. 

• Humans are supposedly biologically indifferent from humans 10-50k years ago. So you could take a child from 25k years ago and it would be indecipherable from a child born today. 

• How many words were there 10,000 years ago? They don’t know, but if you live in a tribe of 150 people and they are all the people you speak to all your life, there are no books, no TV, no language written anywhere… it’s MUCH smaller! 

So what did we have? 

• 10,000 years ago: 

  • Way less words. 

  • No books, no TV, no smart phones

  • Speaking 90% of our life to the same 150 people

  • Work was menial (either gathering, hunting or farming)

  • And work was 20-30 hours a week

  • So we had HUGE amounts of time sitting around and no language with which to talk, and only 150 people about which to talk, and no books or ability to get access to other information. 

  • So we would have done hours a day of sitting and ‘staring at the fire’, or ‘waiting to see an animal to hunt’. Aka natural mediation. 

• What happens today:

  • For the average person we are feeding our mind 100% time. Be in work, news, podcasts, TV, message apps, instagram / twitter / facebook, email, speaking to others, etc. 

  • So basically, not just massive change… what we do today is totally unrecognisable to even 500 years ago. What the average person’s mind does today is 90% different to what the average mind did 500 years ago. Think this 90% change is going to have an impact on your mind? 

• If you are not giving your mind time to do nothing (aka be bored, aka meditatte) IMO you are being bad to your mind. 

Productivity imProving Practice

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: 

• Productivity can be improved with practice.

• The best way to spend your excess mental energy is to invest it in productivity practice. 

Overview: 

• You can cultivate maths ability, physical strength, video game ability, empathy ability, creativity ability… and productivity ability. 

• Investing excess energy in productivity practice 1. Increases productive output in the short term + 2. Decreases the effort needed for productive output in the long term (when energy is waning)

• Improving how much you can get done per hour = 1. Good for the world + 2. Good for you + 3. Good for Edrolo (the company you work at)

• Improving productive output done well = energising

  • Get more done AND get more energy from work. 

• Improving units of output = 1. Increasing output maximum * 2. Increasing the duration you can get output done. 1

• Cultivation practice 1: Higher Max

• Cultivation practice 2: Slower Decay

• Typically for 1 hour a day I push myself to set a new ‘high water mark for Max output’ and push myself to ‘decrease my productive decay’. I've found that doing this well is energising. For details on how I try to do this please read on! 

Jingle: don’t spend your mental energy on depreciating assets, earn interest with an energy investment

++++++++++++++++++

Details

• Effect on the world = 1. Units of output * 2. How you spend the units

  • To maximise improvement  to the world you need to

    • Maximise “1. Units of output”

    • Choose “2. How you spend the units” so they contribute towards effective improvement

  • This blog is only concerned with “1. Units of output”

  • 2. How you spend the unit = 2.1 what you are focused on (pointing in the right direction) + 2.2 are you efficiently going in that direction (eg see ‘Make your environment work for you, not against you’ (productive vs unproductive task switching))

• Get more done in the same time with better energy. 

  • Getting things done well gives me energy. But doing things badly takes energy from me. How to balance this dichotomy? 

  • My energy over a day:

• Normally my energy depletes over the day. 

• In the morning I have excess energy 

• How can I use this excess energy in the morning in a good… productive... way? 

  • One thing I do when I have excess morning energy is I use it to grow my ‘1. Max Productivity Level’ and ‘2. Reduce my productivity decay level.’ 

  • This allows me to 1. Grow productivity and 2. Concentrate on the problem at hand better. WIN WIN baby! 

  • Don’t ask yourself for extra energy in the afternoon. That be draining y’all! 

• Running analogy

  • If you have never been running before you are not going to be very good at it. 

  • If you want to run 10 km it might take you 1.5 hours. 

  • However if you train for a marathon you might move from taking 1.5 hours to 45 mins.

  • Through marathon training you’ll seriously increase your ‘max speed’ and ‘length you can maintain that max speed’. 

  • Also, you can learn to ‘love’ running from ‘hating it’. And the amount of energy needed to go 10km can go down significantly. 

  • Wait wait wait… hold up. Are you saying that with running training you can: 

    • 1. Run at a higher top speed

    • 2. Run at the top speed for longer

    • 3. Enjoy running way more

    • AND, 4. Use less energy to go the same difference?

    • YES! 

  • I think you can accomplish the exact same thing with your mind:

    • 1. You can have a higher max output level

    • 2. You can sustain higher output for much longer

    • 3. You can enjoy the process of growing your mind

    • 4. You can get more done with less energy input

  • One key difference between your mind and your body… as far as I’m aware there are very few physical constraints with your mind (eg is there a max speed for your mind? IMO no) whereas there are limits to your physiology. So this fun game of improving mental productivity is one that never stops giving. 

• What my output looks like with zero external energy input

  • I start at 80% of max output with ‘zero external energy input’

  • Output then decays and I’ll normally have a break or switch tasks when I feel myself get to 70%. 

    • See ‘work with your environment, not against it’

    • I find a 2 min break or switching to a different task can reset me back to 80%. 

• To lift my ‘Max Output’ and decrease my ‘natural level of decay’ I’ll typically push myself to grow in both respects for 1 hour a day. Ie use excess energy to grow myself. 

• Jingle: You should go to the gym for your body once a day. You should go to the gym for your mind once a day. 

• Typically I’ll spend ~1 hour a day in the morning using excess energy to try and set a new ‘output max’ and ‘temper myself against output decay’. 

  • I’ll typically go for a new max of 105% and hold myself to less decay such as the following. 

• 100% is my previous high water mark. Ie the best output max I’ve had to date. 

• By pushing myself into new territory (ie 105%) I’ve found I effectively increase my high watermark. So

  • Max: 100% => 105% => 110% etc. 

  • But also below 100% my “Natural Output Level At Zero Excess Energy” (or NOLAZEE) is “80%”. By lifting my max output level I find that my NOLAZEE also increase. Ie NOLAZEE: 80 => 85% => 90%. 

    • THIS IS FARKING COOL! 

    • So I get more done with the same energy. I’m just ‘fitter’. 

    • … but wait for this… realising that I get more done with the same energy… gives me more energy. 

    • So being fitter makes me fitter. 

• I feel this point bears reiterating. 

  • NOLAZEE = 80% of max output. 

  • But through the ‘Productivity imProving Practice’ described above the output I get done at 80% of max level constantly goes up. 

  • So output goes up but energy needed doesn’t go up! Free money baby! 

• Example using hard numbers. 

  • Let’s say that your current max (100%) units of output an hour is 50 units. 

  • This means that NOLAZEE (80%) is 40 units of output. Ie I can get 40 units of output without pushing myself to get more done. 

  • I use excess energy to set a new ‘high water mark’ / max / 100%. This move my max units of output o 52.5. So it’s more units per hour, ie speed! 

  • What this means is that my new NOLAZEE is 52.5 * 0.8 = 42 units. 

  • So over time what I can get done with zero excess energy (NOLAZEE) improves from 40 => 42. This is akin to being able to go for a run and running faster without spending more energy. 

• Output outcome

  • By growing your max output and decreasing your output decay profile you get more done. 

• Energy outcome

  • First order outcome: For 1 hour in the morning each day doing these growth activities gives me energy. 

    • It’s fun. 

    • I don’t want to do it all day every day. 

    • I typically don’t want to grow my productivity in the afternoon. That is draining! 

  • Second order outcome: realising that I have a higher output for the rest of the day because the 1 hour of growth gives me energy 

  • Conclusion: Done well all hours have improved energy from this ‘Productivity imProving Practice’! You get to have your cake and eat it too… 

    • BTW I’m proud of this mixing of metaphors here. 

    • I’ve linked growing your mind to growing your body through exercise. 

    • But then I’ve said that growing your mind is ‘like eating cake’. 

    • So improving your mind is getting to eat cake (unhealthy food) but have it be healthy for you :) Yay! Twisted logic puzzle fun! 

• Why not push yourself for increasing productivity every hour of every day? 

  • Doing this ‘Productivity imProving Practice’ for 1 hour a day I’ve found gives me energy. As above, doing it all day I’ve found at some point becomes draining and so is actually counterproductive to 1. Your output and 2. Your enjoyment! 

  • On top of this there is normally 0-3x tasks on a day that require 100% output because of time pressure. So I want to have a bunch of ‘reserves’ in the tank which I can call upon to lift productivity outside of ‘planned upgrades’ if I need to get something done. I don’t care if I finish the day with energy in reserve (actually can find this to be a very good thing), I do care however if I need to ‘lift productivity’ but can’t as I’m already too fried from pushing things unnecessarily. 

  • “Hope for the best plan for the worst.”

    • Ideally I’ve always got energy in reserve to call on if I need to lift output. 

    • IMO the goal isn’t to spend all the energy you have each day. The goal is to enjoy each day as much as possible. This means net net you are actually looking for work to give you energy, not be the place you spend energy. 

    • I used to try and ‘leave it all on the field every day’. Now I only want to have ‘it all left on the field’ if external circumstances have called for it. I try very hard not to push myself there internally! 

  • “To make money you have to spend money.”

    • I have to ‘spend’ energy on ‘improving productivity’ but done well I get far more energy back from the energy investment than I put in. Ie it’s positive sum baby! 

    • Want to have lots of energy in your life? Don't hoard it, get good at giving it to other things and people in a way where it comes back in far greater quantities than you put in! 

• I don’t just want to try and make the world better; I want to make myself better. I don’t just want to give energy to others; I want to get energy from others and work in a positive sum fashion (ie more given back than put in). The best things are selfless and selfish people! 

If you can take away only one thing from this blog what would I suggest it be? 

• Growing your output ability can and should be energising. 

People as solutions to problems

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary:

• 1. Project outcome = 2. Existing solution + 3. Ability of people to make new solutions

• A viable solution to a problem is ‘a person who can solve the problem’. 

• Problem + Person who can solve the problem = No problem :) 

Overview:

• You have a problem to solve, and you want a 100% chance of a good outcome. What can a solution be? 

  • The solution can come from a good “2. Existing solution”, or from someone capable of solving the problem, or a combination of both. 

  • To repeat, if you have a person who can solve the problem in time you have; then you have a solution.

  • For example: I might have a large problem. But Jeremy says he is on it. Therefore I do not have a problem anymore. 

• In graphical form:

That is, the better the existing solution, the less need there is for the ability of people to make new solutions

• The worse the existing solution, the more need there is for the ability of people to make new solutions

Jingle: the best solution is a person… because the best people can solve any problem :) 

Another lens:

• To build a business you need lots of different skills. People often talk about figuring out what skills you need and then hiring people to fill the skill you need. 

  • Chess analogy: if you are playing a game of Chess you might be missing a Rook. Therefore look to hire a ‘Rook’ to fill out your team so you can solve a problem. 

• While this is one solution, IMO another viable solution is to build (upgrade) people to have the skills you need. 

  • Chess analogy: the ultimate goal is that you build ‘Queens’, ie pieces that can do all moves. 

  • You want to be able to take a Pawn and build / upgrade them into a Queen… or you want to be able to upgrade yourself into a Queen so you can do all moves! 

• A Queen is someone who can be given any problem and solve it! 

If you are given responsibility to solve a problem from time to time you’ll need to ask for help. Help taxonomy:

• The best people: Ask for help when help is needed (there is correct diagnosis that a problem that needs addressing)

• The next: Ask for help when help wasn’t actually needed (ie have ‘cried wolf’)

• The worst: don’t ask for help

• Comment: don’t be worried about responsibility, don’t be worried about being out of your depth, be worried about not asking for help when you need it. Vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of self awareness!

+++++++++++++

Details:

1. Project outcome = 2. Existing problem solution + 3. Ability of people to make new solutions 

• 2. Existing problem solution = 2.1 view on if the solution is above sufficiency or not * 2.2 how confident you are that the solution is above sufficiency or not

  • 2.2 how confident you are that the solution is above sufficiency or not = percentage of problem space understanding

• Basically, over time your ability to know the problem space should go up. 

• This comes from experience working in the problem space and seeing how other problems within the space are solved

• Let’s say you have never built a textbook before, therefore most of the problem space has never been explored before. 

• However, let’s say you have built a textbook before and you plan to build another one that is 90%+ the same. If you built the previous textbook above quality and speed sufficiency you can have high confidence that using the same process (ie solution to a problem space) for the new textbook should be above sufficiency. 

• 3. Ability of people solving problem to make new solutions = 3.1 size of problem + 3.2 People capability

  • 3.1 Size of problem 

    • Large vs Medium vs Small problems

      • Large - if you don’t fix a Large you will either not 1. have the project done above sufficient quality OR 2. have the project done on time

        • Insufficient quality example 1 = has dealbreakers such as factual errors

        • Insufficient quality example 2 = does not have agreed upon dealmakers like quality answers

      • Medium - not fixing medium will mean you get the project done on time and above sufficient quality BUT will have significant unnecessary pain in delivery. 

        • Example 1 = a motivation issue from the creation process that if left unchecked will eventually cause someone to leave

      • Small - nice to fix but not doing so will not affect anyone. 

  • 3.2 People capability taxonomy:

    • L1: can see Large problems 

    • L2: can see Large problems and fixes after the problem has occurred 

    • L3: can see Large problems and can prevent the problem  from occurring (don’t get good at solving problems, get good at not having problems)

    • L4: can see Medium problems

    • L5: can see Medium problems and fixes after the problem has occurred 

    • L6: can see Medium problems and can prevent the problem from occurring

    • L7: can see Small problems

    • L8: can see Small problems and fixes after the problem has occurred 

    • L9: can see Small problems and can prevent the problem from occurring

  • What level of people capacity is needed? Well that depends on what a person is responsible for!

  • Ie. not everyone has the responsibility of needing to be able to see and prevent large problems

  • Question for discussion: What level of capacity is needed from you in different contexts? 

For any Solution there should be sign off for what level of ‘2. Existing Solution (machine)’ is needed and what level of ‘3. Ability of People’ is needed

• Context: 

  • Sometimes the sign off is 100% people related. Eg if Jeremy says he has something I don’t need to check, I’m just like fark yeah, nothing to worry about here :)! 

  • It’s possible it the solution can be 100% Existing solution (machine) if the machine is built for 1. Self regulation, 2. Self improvement and 3. Self replication. 

  • However it is normally some combination of ‘2. Existing Solution (Machine)’ and ‘3. Ability of people’. 

• Supporting people to increase their ability to solve problems: 

  • Theory: 

    • Continuum 1: Reportability ⇔ Responsibility

    • Continuum 2: Rule ⇔ Principle

      • Rule = no interpretation required, follow 100% the letter of the rule. 

      • Principle = interpretation required.

  • Implementation:

    • If a product is 100% standardised (eg a pen, a car) then you can create a solution that works on 100% Reportability and Rules. 

    • However if you create a product that has commonality but each unit also has specificity (ie is different on some levels) (eg a lesson in a textbook, eg whether to invest in a startup) then you can create solution that has Principles and Responsibility. 

      • Bad Principles and no Responsibility < no systems < Good Principles and Responsibility

      • IMO done well Principles and Responsibility mean a much better outcome and more enjoyment than ‘pure intuition’ AKA no systems. 

  • Example: 

    • For something like making a textbook there will always be new unforeseen things that show up. So while the ‘1. Existing Solution’ might have worked well in the past that doesn’t guarantee it will work well in the future. 

    • As such you should have Principles, Systems (a machine) and people looking after and upgrading the Principles and Systems (ie Responsibility). 

    • IMO the minimum responsibility for this is “L1: can see Large problems”.  IE any reasons we won’t 1. have the project done above sufficient quality OR 2. have the project done on time

    • I don’t think it matters if you can’t see a solution to a Large problem, please just sing out ‘I would like some help here’. However not being able to see Larges means no responsibility can be given. 

Increasing people’s ability to problem solve = 1. Asking for help + 2.taking responsibility 

• 1. Ask for help when you need help, ask for help when you are unsure if you need help, just don’t ]not ask for help if you are unsure! 

  • That is, when in doubt, ask for help. 

  • Help taxonomy:

    • The best people: Ask for help when help is needed (there is correct diagnosis that a problem that needs addressing)

    • The next: Ask for help when help wasn’t actually needed (ie have ‘cried wolf’)

    • The worst: don’t ask for help

• 2. Responsibility:

• If you want to help make the world better IMO you’ll need to be able to deliver something, AKA take responsibility for getting something done. IMO if you can’t take responsibility then you can’t be relied upon to deliver something and therefore can’t make the world better. 

• As such, taking responsibility is one of the best things ever :). 

• However “No responsibility = bad”, “Too much responsibility = bad.”

• To enjoy responsibility IMO you need to get good at: 

  • 1. Finding and solving problems, and 

  • 2. Being comfortable asking for help! No one sees everything, everyone needs help from time to time. 

• Comment:

  • Some deliverables are ‘mission critical’. Eg having no dealbreakers in a textbook or not having the agreed upon dealmakers. 

  • In the case of ‘mission critical’ deliverables IT IS better to be safe than sorry.

  • For a ‘mission critical’ deliverable no one will ever get in trouble for ‘asking for help unnecessarily’ (ie crying wolf)...

  • … but not asking for help when there could be a ‘Large Problem’ is a HUGE problem! 

Onwards & upwards :)!

Strong beliefs help loosely… and multiple beliefs harmoniously

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

One Sentence Summary: ideas and beliefs can always be updated, so try not to attach your ego to them by thinking there is a right / wrong!

Definitions: 

• Fact: there is a known right / wrong. 

  • Eg today is Tuesday. Eg the coffee costs $4.00. 

• Idea (belief): there is no right / wrong. Ideas can always be upgraded and often it makes sense to have multiple schools of thought for each Idea. 

  • Eg how to best spend a Tuesday. Eg how to make the best coffee. Eg How to live a good life. 

  • Even physics is an ‘Idea’. There was Newtonian physics => Relativity => Quantum Mechanics => String Theory etc etc. There is no ‘right’ for physics, the Idea can be constantly updated. 

Overview of steps:

• 1. Build belief for a problem space (typically start with the prevailing orthodoxy) / identify a belief you have for a particular situation/thing

• 2. Sense check where the belief for works and doesn’t work.

  • Why do you have this belief? “Everything works somewhere nothing works everywhere.”

• 3. Find a second belief (school of thought) that can help you understand the gaps in your current belief.

  • Do the two beliefs overlap? “The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.”

• 4. Understand the pros / cons of each belief and where they work / don’t. Not just ‘strong beliefs held loosely’ but ‘multiple beliefs held harmoniously’.

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Details

“Strong beliefs held loosely”

• IMO normally one goes from not knowing about a topic and therefore being open minded (ie no knowledge = open minded)...

• … to having a stronger and stronger belief and corresponding ‘confidence’ in the belief about a topic (ie knowledge = close minded).

• Unfortunately I think this is normally counter productive. 

• This is where the saying ‘strong beliefs held loosely’ comes from. IMO you want to go have increasing knowledge about a topic (ie increase confidence and belief) but remain open minded to new information and different points of view (ie flexible to change your view, aka held loosely). 

  • “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Voltaire

Learning about the world is so much fun… but learning about it in an unhealthy fashion can lead one to be locked in a prison of others beliefs; confirmation biasing and defending “your” beliefs to a negative sum life :(!?!

What I try to do:

• 1. Learn about a new area / problem space and understand the prevailing orthodoxy / ‘school of thought’ / doctrine / belief. 

  • Example:

    • Nuclear weapons are bad, therefore Governments should regulate nuclear weapons. So government regulate everything?

• 2. Once I think I understand a ‘school of thought’ I then try to find where it doesn’t work. 

  • “Everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere.”

  • IMO one shouldn’t hold a view / belief unless one knows where it doesn’t work. 

  • How to do things badly: fit a ‘belief’ everywhere in a blunt fashion. 

  • Your map will fit some terrain, it won’t fit all terrain. 

  • Example: 

    • The government should ban proliferation of nuclear weapons, so the government should ban alcohol (aka prohibition in the US). Alcohol can be made in anyone’s basement, nuclear weapons can’t. Effectively banning alcohol proved not possible and a second order consequence was the rise of the major US crime families which are still kicking today (more than 100 years later). Ok so the government can effectively ban some things (eg nuclear weapons) but not others (eg alcohol). 

• 3. Once you have a decent understanding of one ‘school of thought’ / belief (eg what it is and where it doesn’t work) then it’s time to find another school of thought that you can apply to the problem space. 

  • “The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.” 

  • “I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.” Charlie Munger

  • Example: 

    • The government should regulate some areas saying ‘this isn’t allowed’ (nuclear weapons production) and regulate others saying ‘this is allowed but with certain rules’ (eg alcohol production, no sales to minors)... but should there be areas where the government doesn’t need to regulate? Ie that markets can be self regulating? 

    • “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.” Adam Smith

    • In ‘The Wealth Of Nations’ Adam Smith put forward a concept that ‘looking after one’s own self interest IS looking after society's interest’, ie the two are aligned. Ie that markets can be self regulating. 

    • Basically, ‘School of thought 1: government regulation needed for good society outcomes’ vs ‘School of thought 2: government regulation not needed for good society outcomes’. Hmmm… 

• 4. Now it’s time to see where each of these schools of thought work well and don’t work well and compare and contrast. 

  • “One person’s trash is another’s treasure.” 

  • Example: 

    • It makes sense that the government regulates the creation of all new home loans. It doesn’t make sense the the government regulate the creation of all new businesses. 

    • In other words you have to pick regulation that works well for different circumstances, but get out of the way in other places. Basically, it’s complicated and messy! 

    • Good government = good. Bad government = bad. Not a blunt ‘all government = good’ or ‘all government = bad’. 

• 5. Try to dissociate your ego from any ‘beliefs’ / ‘schools of thought’

  • I sometimes think of there being two types of knowledge: Facts and Ideas. 

    • Fact = there is a known right answer. Eg today is Sunday. 

    • Idea = there isn’t a known right answer. Eg how best to spend a Sunday. 

  • Even things like physics are Ideas. Eg Newtonian physics => Relativity => Quantum Mechanics => String Theory etc etc. 

  • For ‘Ideas’ IMO it’s best try not to attach any part of your identity to them. IMO Ideas can always be updated (eg see physics) and should be balanced with other Ideas / beliefs that help further explain a problem space. 

    • If someone says it’s Sunday but it’s Monday gently correct them. 

    • If someone says ‘the government should run everything always’ gently try and put forward a place where it might not be best for the government to run something… hint: the person you are likely talking to most is yourself! 

  • “Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.” Bertrand Russel. 

  • IMO the existing schooling system inculcates that there is a right and wrong answer. For Facts I agree, for Ideas I don’t. IMO this programming is deep in society and is net net negative. Eg see what happens if a politician changes their mind on a topic! 

  • I don’t want to be defined by my beliefs, I want to be defined by trying to hold many beliefs on the one area and trying to understand why others have their beliefs. “The ability to change your mind is a superpower.” Ray Dalio

    • One should try to be tolerant of the intolerant. :)

  • I hope to constantly learn about the world and myself, I hope to constantly update and build new believes. I hope to change my mind on many many things. I hope to become increasingly tolerant! 

  • I hope to have ‘strong beliefs held loosely’ and ‘multiple beliefs held harmoniously’ :). 

Here is another ‘lens’ on this concept, from Harvard Professor Robert Kegan:

• Stage 1: I am unaware of the rules (beliefs, schools of thought, etc)

• Stage 2: I am aware of the rules but not how the rules related to each other. 

• Stage 3-5: 

Another lens - Perfectionism vs Sufficiency

• For Facts you can have right / wrong. 

• For Ideas there is no such thing, so you need to stop at ‘sufficient’. 

  • For example most of secondary school physics is Newtonian Physics. This has many ‘holes’ in it, it is not a perfect reflection of reality. However it can still be very useful. So at times Newtonian Physics can be the best level to use, it is sufficient! 

• I try to embrace the idea that I'll never know what is ‘right’ for an ‘Idea’... and that often when someone has a different view that is an opportunity to learn more about the idea, not that someone is ignorant!

One thing to take away: for Ideas try not to think you know the answer or that there is a right / wrong. Try instead to constantly upgrade your understanding and add new schools of thought to your repertoire. 

… and a fun exercise I do from time to time: 

• Think about someone you really dislike (eg in politics) and find something they believe that you agree with. Eg if you are left leaning find a policy from the right you really believe. And if you are right leaning visa versa. 

• For your best friend, find something they believe that you strongly disagree with… and then watch the mental acrobatics you perform justifying why they are a good person… then think about if you met a stranger and found out they believed this what you’d think of them! Yes your friend is still a good person despite this belief but that random is a d!ck and representative of what is wrong with the world… chew on your bias for a minute :) 

… ok and one more for fun :)

• IMO if you don't know what your biases are it's because you are blind to them, not that you don't have any. Blind bias is the most dangerous kind!

• IMO for an Idea, if you don't think you can be wrong, you are likely highly biased. 

• IMO you should be trying to find where you are close minded (ie have bias, ie believe something strongly) and attempt to open your mind there. Ie systematically try turn close mindedness into open mindedness. 

• This doesn't mean you can have a strong belief, but ideally it's held loosely… And with multiple other beliefs harmoniously :)

Working with your environment vs against your environment

By Duncan Anderson and Hannah Liu. To see all blogs click here.

One Sentence Summary: Not all tasks are the same, and therefore the way we approach different tasks shouldn’t be the same either. When we find the right approach for a task, productivity increases. Have your environment work for you, not against you. 

A good job = 1. Doing the right things * 2. Doing things right

• I used to concentrate almost exclusively on ‘1. Doing the right things’. While this is not unimportant, I’ve found that ‘2. Doing things right’ is crucial. 

• For myself, in a lot of respects ‘being productive at work’ = ‘enjoying work’. 

  • Low productivity = unhappy

  • High productivity = happy

• “Work isn’t about time management, it’s about energy management.” 

  • I’ve found that properly managing my tasks and how to switch between them is a great way to increase productivity and a great way to help move tasks from being draining to energising. In other words, finding the right approach for the right taskis a great way to improve work happiness. 

  • Overall, I’m doing the ‘same things’ but I’ve found I can do them ‘much much better’. This is free productivity, free happiness and free energy that was being left on the table! 

• Jingle: “Work with your environment, not against it.” 

  • It doesn’t matter if you are given the world’s best ingredients. You can still turn them into a horrible meal. 

  • Finding the best approach is a great way to get the most out of ingredients! 

A new tool for your toolbox

• Outcome = 1. Number of people * 2. Macro approach * 3. Micro approach

  • There is no one right outcome for all problems. You need to pick the custom approach for the problem. 

  • Hopefully we’ll be able to upgrade how we do things indefinitely. 

  • This is hopefully a new tool for you to use, how and when to use, you need to figure this out! 

  • Let’s take Textbook Quality Assurance as an example

    • 1. Number of people 

      • should we have 1 round of checking, 2 rounds, 3 rounds. 

      • NETs only, Teachers only, NETs & teachers? 

    • 2. Macro approach

      • Should we only read closely or should we do things ‘double blind’. 

      • Should we have a custom process to check an individual thing, eg we look for flow this way. Or look for everything at the same time? 

    • 3. Micro approach

      • Should you do the task all in one hit or should you break it up into small unit and / or have breaks. 

        • This blog is about how to use breaks to get better outcomes for certain tasks

        • This blog is about how to think about using smaller units of a task to get better outcomes. 

• What comes next? I don’t know. But let’s figure it out people :). 

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Details:

Operation modes

• There are different ways of operating, or ways to approach tasks

  • Approach 1: do a task from end to end

  • Approach 2: break up a task into smaller component and switch between pieces

  • Approach 3: switching between multiple tasks

• The appropriate approach to task depends on what the task itself is

  • You may have a task that requires diligence (eg. Quality Assurance in Textbook lessons)

  • You may have a task that has a mix of ‘energising’ and ‘draining’ components (eg. Theory Master lessons, energising review and comms, but draining trix data entry)

• It can be easy to get caught up in the whirlwind, and feel like the best thing to do is to continue to put one foot in front of the other and push forward, but there are times where maybe side-stepping is a better option. There isn’t one way of operation, and by choosing the appropriate mode of operation, we can work with our environment productively, rather than feel we’re fighting against it.

Generations: 

• DA’s personal journey of operation mode:

  • G1: No system for staying on task

  • G2: No task switching allowed until the task is completed

  • G3: Only allow task switching that improves productivity / enjoyment 

• A long time ago I used to have no system for staying on task at work. For example I’d have email notifications on (turn them OFF!!!!!). 

  • I’d be happily doing some task and then I’d all of a sudden find myself doing some other different task… how the hell did that happen? 

• For a while I refused to switch tasks until something was finished. 

  • Multitasking doesn’t work. 

  • Multitasking lowers productivity. 

  • Not only does multitasking lower productivity it lowers your ability to concentrate on one thing effectively significantly lowering your ability to be present and problem solve. As far as I was concerned multitasking was less productivity (see the studies) and multitasking made you dumber. 

  • Multi-tasking was for Muppets! 

• However my productivity and enjoyment was consistently dropping the longer I worked on something. I’ve found always only working on a single task until it is done isn’t the optimal strategy! 

• Now I try to use different strategies to increase my productivity and my enjoyment.

Strategies Summary: 

• Stop passive task switching (only do task switching you approve)

  • No email notifications. 

  • Only have @tags in Slack for urgent queries (ie requires a response in less than 1 hour).

  • Deep work mornings (ie no email, no Slack, no meetings) before midday. 

• Using breaks to lift your productivity (pomodoro technique)

  • Typically your productivity for a task drops the longer you work on it. 

  • “The Pomodoro Technique is a time management system that encourages people to work with the time they have—rather than against it. Using this method, you break your workday into 25-minute chunks separated by a few minute breaks. These intervals are referred to as pomodoros.”

    • Work for 25 mins, have a 3 min break. Repeat. 

    • I’ve found this can be much better for productivity than eg doing a 90 hour uninterrupted block of time

  • I try to have a 1-5 min break after productivity has dropped to 80%, often this can reset productivity back to 100%. Done well I’ve found this much better than just continuing to plow through a task until finish. 

• Task switching to improve your productivity 

  • Sometimes taking a break doesn’t reset your productivity. If you have reached this point I find that if you switch to a new task you can often reset your productivity. 

  • “Change is as good as a holiday.” => “Changing tasks is a good way to reset your productivity.”

  • When my reset point and / or time needed between breaks gets to short I will switch to another task. This I’ve found often resets my productivity starting level back to 100% and massively increases the time until my productivity has dropped to 80% (aka need another break).

  • At the start of each day I get the 2-3x most important tasks I need to get done. 

  • Then, if my productivity reset after a break is ‘only back to 80%’ or ‘the time between needing a break’ is too short, I'll switch to a new task. 

  • 90% of the time I find switching tasks resets my productivity starting point back to 100%! Yes, 100%, 90% of the time :)! This is one of the best productivity hacks I know of.“Don’t push yourself to get productivity up, have productivity pulled from you.” Task switching done well is one of the best ways I’ve found to have a naturally high productivity level :). 

• Bouncing between a draining and an energising task 

  • Some tasks are necessary but draining. 

  • When doing an inherently draining task I try to pair it with an energising task. 

  • I will do 1 unit of draining task followed by 1 unit of energising task. 

    • Often a task can be broken down into specific individual units. This means that while the total task is 100 mins, it can actually be done in 10x 10 minute units. 

    • What I try to do is 1x 10 minute unit of draining task and pair it with an energising task that has a similarly small unit size (eg 10 mins) and then bounce between each task. 

      • 10 mins of draining task

      • 10 mins of energising task

      • 10 mins of draining task

      • 10 mins of energising task

      • Etc etc

    • What I try not to do: all 100 mins of the draining task in one hit. 

    • What I try not to do: switch between tasks unless I’ve finished a discrete unit of work. This is unproductive task switching. 

  • Example 1: you might have a set of 5x Theory Master lessons to review

    • Energising task: review Theory Master lessons and adding upside

    • Draining task: data entry for formatting and course trixes (essential but not the funnest)

    • Proposal:

      • 1. Review 1x TM lesson 

      • 2. Do the admin for that 1x TM lesson

      • Repeat

    • As opposed to:

      • 1. Review all TM lessons 

      • 2. Do the admin for all TM lessons 

    • Seems simple but can make a world of difference!

  • Example 2: writing a textbook.

    • Energising task: writing new questions and answers for a lesson

    • Draining task: quality assurance to make sure an existing question and answer is 100% factually correct. 

    • Proposal: 

      • 1. Write 1x question and answer

      • 2. Do quality assurance for 1x existing question and answer

      • 3. Write 1x question and answer

      • 4. Do quality assurance for 1x existing question and answer

      • Etc etc. 

    • Don’t: 

      • 1. Write all the questions and answers for 1x lesson in one go. 

      • 2. Do all the quality assurance for all existing questions and answers from 1x lesson in one go. 

    • Done well this should give a higher quality outcome, be faster and be more energising. 

• Tasks that require extreme diligence

  • Productivity levels != diligence levels

  • I try to recognise the diligence needed for a task and match my flow to support this. 

  • The higher the diligence needed = the smaller the unit of work I try to have

  • While I might feel like I’m super productive (eg still at 90%) if the task requires 100% diligence then if my diligence levels are dropped to 95% it’s time for a break and / or switching of task. 

  • For example, for tasks requiring high diligence levels I’ll have a 1 min break every 10 mins. But at the same level of productivity for a ‘non-high diligence’ task I might have a break every 60 mins. 

  • A task like ensuring a textbook lesson has no factual errors IMO requires extreme diligence. So taking a 1 min break every 10 mins while authoring content might not be ‘wasting time’, but ‘gaining time’ because you have higher quality as as such far less changes needing to be made from the quality assurance processes. 

  • A very important concept to understand is ‘quality as speed’. Often the fastest way to improve speed is to improve quality stopping bugs as close to the source / preventing them. “Want to improve speed, first improve quality!”  

What comes next for ‘doing things right’? 

• I don’t know. However I’ve always found there is a next. Got a way to help me work better, GIVE ME THE GIVE PLEASE!!! 

‘1:1s’. Done badly 1+1 = 0. Done well 1+1=10!

By Duncan Anderson and Rex Roseman. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: Everything is the outcome of human capital. So if you can upgrade human capital you upgrade everything. ‘1:1s’ have gone from a thing I didn’t like to one of the best ways I know of to improve others and myself. 

Overview: 

• What is  ‘1:1’? 

  • It’s a meeting set aside each week for a ‘manager : direct report’ to talk for up to an hour. A ‘one on one’ meeting. 

  • What do you talk about and do? I’ve changed this massively over the years. See details below. 

• I had 1:1s in past jobs and found them to be a waste of time. 

• I’ve slowly been able to improve how I do 1:1s from being ‘negative sum waste of time’ to ‘the best part of my week’. 

• Personnel 1:1 = 1. Keeping the wheels on + 2. Upgrading each other 

  • Basically, ‘1:1s’ are now 80% about ‘2. Upgrading each other’. 

  • IT’S THE BEST! I used to get zero improvement in 1:1s, now I get massive improvement and more than that, ~10x the improvement I got a year ago… I hope in a year from today I can be 10x the improvement again! 

• “2. Upgrading each other” strategies for ‘1:1s’ (read on for details on these strategies)

  • Strategy: Replaying a recent event and both people in the 1:1 playing 'if I had my time again could I have done this better from a logic perspective?'

  • Strategy: Replaying a recent event and together playing 'if I had my time again could I have done this better from an emotion (empathy) perspective?'

  • Strategy: Asking the other person to take me through their thought process for something (this is different to event replaying as it's more 'you did this written proposal, take me through that').

  • Strategy: Put forward an idea for the other to consider and then discuss together how you might have used the idea in a recent event

  • Strategy: Go through something that someone else did particularly well or not so well and try and understand what happened (eg from logic or emotional lens)

Meaningfully affecting another is one of the most rewarding things I know of. 1:1s done well are one of the best vehicles I know to meaningfully improve another. 

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” - Carl Jung. I find that trying to find ways to help others helps me find ways to improve myself. Getting good at helping others = getting good at helping yourself. 

Jingle: Done badly 1 + 1 = 0. Done well 1 + 1 = 10!!!

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Details:

Don't be too busy to improve :)

How DA thinks about People '1:1s':

• At Edrolo everyone has a regular 1:1 with their manager

  • This is a big time commitment in the company and a big part of the leadership team at Edrolo

  • If we are going to commit this time, we want it to be valuable

  • As with everything, 1:1’s done well add tremendous value, 1:1’s done wrong will be draining 

• How I think about 1:1’s

  • 1:1 can be come in all different shapes and sizes, IMO 1:1 should be focused on upgrading human capital and getting work done, below is the equation I use to think about the components of 1:1

  • Personnel 1:1 = 1. Keeping the wheels on + 2. Upgrading each other 

    • 1. Keeping the wheels on = 1. Workflow management + 2. Build an understanding of motivation + 3. Motivation management (this needs to be mutually positive sum, the direct should not be dependent on their manager) 

      • This component of a 1:1 is all about getting sh!t done and making sure the direct is motivated and able to bring up any issues that may be on their mind and affecting their ability to work

    • 2. Upgrading each other = 4. Problem solving + 5. Gift giving + 6. Discuss people’s learning and writing

      • 4. Problem solving = an opportunity for the other person to give you a gift. Eg i was hoping to see how you’d approach this. Eg I’ve got this thing, how would you approach it. 

      • 5. Gift giving = opportunity to level up for the other person. Mostly do this through provoking thought vs force feeding. 

      • 6. Discuss people’s learning and writing

        • Writing = thinking

        • Writing = problem solving

        • Writing = communication

        • Upgrading writing = upgrading everything. Talking about someone’s ‘learning’ is often one of the easiest ways to give them an gift. 

      • Upgrading each other can go both ways, while it is mostly on the manager to upgrade the direct, the direct certainly should try upgrade the manager where they can

        • We can always improve and everyone can improve each other

• What is achievable through 1:1

  • I never used to like 1:1 in previous jobs, they felt like a waste of time

    • It took me a long time to realise what could be achieved through them and even longer time to upgrade myself in how to run them

    • I have come to realise that 1:1 are the most effective way we have to improve edrolo and therefore education and the world

      • Human capital is our product (the goal of a Maths textbook isn’t better maths test scores, IMO it’s better humans. The goal of a humanities textbook isn’t better humanities test scores, it’s better humans), human capital is everything

      • Improving is limitless, we will never be done improving 

  • The 1:1 taxonomy of indefinite improvements forever

    • Keegans 1:1 from view of direct taxonomy

      • L1 - My manager gives my priorities

      • L2 - I am to discuss my priorities and what I think I should do with my manager

      • L3 - My 1:1 is a mutual positive sum environment that motivates me to work on my priorities

      • L4 - My manager grows me beyond my priorities

      • L5 - I am able to limitlessly transcend my abilities to do new work I didn’t think I could do and grow my manager in the process

    • This is amazing, so if done well, we can limitlessly improve ourselves forever and this can be done in a mutually positive sum way between the manager and direct

Practical - How DA runs 1:1’s

• This is how I think 1:1s should be run, this is not how 1:1 have to be run at Edrolo

  • However I do think that everyone should be striving to get to L5 in all of their one on ones :)

• Pre 1:1 meeting: 

  • Send weekly email and read as prep for the meeting making notes in the weekly email

  • Have an ongoing doc of things you’d like to speak to someone about at the next 1:1. When you have ideas to talk about in the 1:1 dump them into the doc (my doc is now 81k words!)

• In 1:1 meeting:

  • First do: “1. Keeping the wheels on”

    • Go through these areas as needed (not all needed every week) 

      • Review last week’s execution vs plan (eg mega blowouts etc)

      • Check in on the status of key deliverables

      • Plan for the next week / workflow management (eg anything need to be shifted around from different people)

      • Motivation / stress

      • Anything in weekly email that jumps out

      • Points that are best to bring up in person (eg email is not the best medium)

    • Depending on the experience of the direct and how long you have built your relationship for this may be a small component of the 1:1 or a large component

      • Over time as the direct gets more independent the time spent on this should decrease

  • Then the best bit: “2. Upgrading each other” - Trying to find ways to upgrade each other (treasure hunt, using eg treasure taxonomy):

    • From the lens of yourself (however you can learn from everything and everyone):

      • Strategy 1: Replaying a recent event and both people in the 1:1 playing 'if I had my time again could I have done this better from a logic perspective?'

        • Replaying by talking aloud with someone in a 1:1 massively massively helps me understand myself.

        • It's kind of like post game analysis. "Then Duncan fumbled the ball and passed it to the other team..."

        • I think you can learn from many places... but a huge one is by looking in the recent rear view mirror. IMO not looking in the recent review view mirror with a colleague is robbing yourself of some of the lowest hanging upgrade fruits.

      • Strategy 2: Replaying a recent event and together playing 'if I had my time again could I have done this better from an emotion (empathy) perspective?'

    • From the lens of the other in the meeting (however you can learn from everything and everyone):

      • Strategy 3: Asking the other person to take me through their thought process for something (this is different to event replaying as it's more 'you did this written proposal, take me through that').

        • I find attempting to articulate and analyse together such FUN!

        • Just attempting to articulate what I did I find massively revealing. In education research this is called ‘the explanation effect’. 

      • Strategy 4: Asking the other person if we can replay an event of theirs from the last week from a logic perspective

      • Strategy 5: Asking the other person if we can replay an event of theirs from the last week from an emotion perspective

    • From the lens of ideas (however you can learn from everything and everyone):

      • Strategy 6: Put forward an idea for the other to consider and then discuss together how you might have used the idea in a recent event

        • Eg I've been playing with the idea of "push vs support vs intervene vs leave alone". In this circumstance, if I had my time again, I think I would do 'support' instead of 'push'. Here is my [reason], thoughts?

        • This is through the lens of “Idea => Event”. Strategy 1 is more through the lens of “Event => Idea”

    • From the lens of helping people not in the meeting (however you can learn from everything and everyone):

      • Strategy 7: Go through something that someone else did particularly well or not so well and try and understand what happened (eg from logic or emotional lens)

        • Eg did you see this from Person X. IMO epic redirection of energy from Person Y to a positive sum outcome. Do you feel this is a fair characertisation

    • Comment

      • These strategies are some of the ideas I have had for how to look for upgrades and by no way is this an exhaustive list

        • Limitedless upgrades means there is limitless ways to find upgrades

        • Everyone should be excited to go looking for them and together we will improve the world

      • Basically by looking at yourself and others with people in a '1:1' I find that I'm: 1. able to find way more 'ingredients' * 2. understand 'ingredients and models' much better => 3. much bigger possible upgrades (treasure)

      • I use to do zero of 'things like the 7 strategies above' in '1:1s' 3 years ago. Now the amount of 'treasure' I get out of '1:1s' is terrific! Arrr, analysing with me pirate treasured (work)maties! 

      • Through things like the strategies above I’ve been able to go from 1:1s where there were no ‘upgrades’ to ‘upgrades in almost every 1:1’. 

      • Improvements used to be impossible. Now improvements are infinite!

If you take one thing away from this blog, what should it be?

• That 1:1s can be so much more than just keeping the wheels on, they are a place to build a strong relationship centred about the upgrading each other

  • This won’t happen organically though you need to actively think about what you are getting out of 1:1 and make sure the environment is working for you

  • You may not be at L5 in your 1:1 but that is okay, you can get there you can build them up and improve, we are always improving, we will always be improving

• Hopefully this is energizing and if you haven’t thought of 1:1s like this before you can start to shift your mindset and figure what you can do to improve the 1:1’s you run or the 1:1 you have with you manager

The Decision Dichotomy: how making the right decision can get you a bad outcome

By Duncan Anderson and Daniel Tram. To see all blogs click here.

One sentence summary: Bad decisions will eventually kill a company, but decisions that no one is on board with will mean that good decisions can’t make a company. 

In some respects a company is a series of decisions. Decisions have to be made, and making no decision is a decision. Not everyone is going to be on board with every decision (disagree but commit) but no one will be on board with a decision that doesn’t have fair process. 

• Good decision * Fair process => Good outcome (people in the company are on board)

• Good decision * Not fair process => Bad outcome (people in the company are NOT on board)

• Bad decision * Fair process => Good outcome (people in the company are on board)

• Bad decision * Not fair process => Bad outcome (people in the company are NOT on board)

Jingle: Fair Process > Decision Quality

What is fair process? Well it depends, some thoughts on this below :). 

Whose responsibility is it to have fair process? Everyone! No one is perfect, but we can hope to be ‘fairly’ good. One person deciding what ‘fair’ is sounds ‘fairly’ ridiculous to me. Because the outcome of ‘fair process’ is ‘everyone on board with a decision’ then input into what is fair can come from anywhere. You don’t and can’t have input on everything, but if something really doesn’t sit well with you to the point of you ‘not being on board’ please please PLEASE bring it up! Bringing it up is ‘loyal opposition’, not doing so is ‘disloyal opposition’. 

Overview

• We’re all making decisions every day!

  • That’s what makes the job interesting - we’re not just mindlessly executing processes

• Decision Outcome = 1. Belief in Fair Process * 2. Trust in Decision Maker * 3. Decision Made 

  • The decision impact is not just what you decide to do, it’s the impact that occurs after the decision made

• Commitment to Implementation of Decision = 1. Belief in Fair Process * 2. Trust in Decision Maker

  • Commitment to implementation is independent of the actual decision made

  • The ‘right’ decision can be made, but if there is no commitment from the team to implement it effectively then there will be negligible delivered impact

  • A team can wholeheartedly commit to the implementation of a decision even if they disagree with the actual decision made as long as there is:

    • 1. Belief in Fair Process

      • Fair Process =/= engaging everyone

      • Idea Meritocracy =/= Democracy

        • DO Make a decision based on the best idea

        • DO NOT just make a decision based on who had the idea or how many people have the idea

        • “Your representative owes you their judgement. And they betray you if they sacrifices it to your opinion.” Edmund Burke. 

      • What is a fair process varies from decision to decision

      • Factors to consider when determining what fair process is:

        • Level of behaviour change required

        • Level of Emotions associated with the change (controversiality)

      • Decision makers need to engage their team to ensure their team feel like a sufficiently fair process has taken place

    • 2. Trust in Decision Maker

      • Team members implementing a decision need to believe that the decision maker is being open, honest and authentic

      • Team members implementing a decision need to believe that the decision maker is learning from experience - both good and bad decisions

      • Decision makers need to constantly engage their team to build this trust

• Long term outcome for company = 1. Belief in Fair Process * 2. Trust in Decision Maker

  • The long term outcome for company is also independent of specific decisions made

  • Making the ‘right decisions’ without fair process or trust in decision makers will mean a poor outcome for the company in the long term

  • Making the wrong decisions with fair process or trust in decision makers 

++++++++++++++++++++++

Details

1. Belief in Fair Process

• Context on fair process and disagreement

  • How you engage others when making a decision is important, perhaps the most important thing (HBR Article: Fair Process Managing in the Knowledge Economy)

    • "employees will commit to a manager’s decision—even one they disagree with—if they believe that the process the manager used to make the decision was fair."

    • "people care as much about the fairness of the process through which an outcome is produced as they do about the outcome itself.”

  • Having disagreement between what is the right decision is actually a symptom of having a diverse group that is striving to make the best decision. (Kellogg Insight: Better Decisions Through Diversity)

    • “When these diverse groups perform well, they don’t recognize their improved performance”

    • “a diverse group’s members will typically feel less confident about their progress largely due to the lack of homogeneity.”

• Ok, fair process is important. So what exactly is fair process?

  • Well, it depends on the problem you’re dealing with! When trying to work out what fair process is, factors to consider are:

    • Level of behaviour change required

    • Level of Emotions associated with the change (controversiality)

  • A matrix for you all!

• Fair process with Low Emotions/Low Behaviour Change: Send Comms post decision

• Clearly communicate decisions in written comms to ensure alignment

  • See: “Expectations vs Suggestions vs Recommendations”

• Decision maker(s) are empowered to unilaterally make decisions 

• If every decision involves engaging everyone we won’t be able to improve education very fast!

• Fair process does not always mean a democracy - we empower people to take responsibility

• DA: “I love that I didn’t know about this!”

• Fair process with High Emotions/Low Behaviour Change: Explanation and Discussion

  • Post decision making, provide an explanation for the reasoning behind the decision

  • Provide the opportunity for those impacted to ask questions to understand

• Fair process with Low Emotions/High Behaviour Change: Engage with representative sample

  • Spend time with those that the decision will affect to validate and update your understanding of the implications of the decision

  • Given the low emotional impact, this will focus on gathering understand and input so only a representative sample of people are required

    • "While fair process gives every idea a chance, the merit of the ideas—and not consensus—is what drives the decision making. Nor is fair process the same as democracy in the workplace.” (HBR Article: Fair Process Managing in the Knowledge Economy)

  • The aim of this approach is to:

    • Improve the understanding of the decision inputs

    • Demonstrate that the due diligence was done

  • Follow up with written comms post-decision

• Fair process with High Emotions/High Behaviour Change: Bring on the Journey

  • Engage with all those affected

  • Provide all with the opportunity to provide input prior to the decision being made

    • Ensure that the environment is ‘emotional safe’ so that team members can communicate radically candorously   

  • Post decision: Communicate the input that has been received and how the decision was made

• Note, this matrix is only a guide - use your judgement to tweak this framework a factor is only rated at “medium” or “very high”

  • Variations that can be used to adjust this framework:

    • Communicate before/after

      • The higher the stakes, the more likely pre-decisions engagement is needed

    • Written Vs In-person 

      • The higher the stakes, the more important it is that we sacrifice short term efficiency to ensure greater ‘buy-in’ through communicating in person

    • Explanation Vs Input

    • Sample population Vs Everyone

2. Trust in Decision Maker

• For a team to commit to a decision made, they need to believe and trust the decision maker

• In this blog we’ll focus on the “Perception of Self-Interest” and Credibility” elements of trust 

• Perception of Self-Interest

  • This can be thought about whether or not the team believes that the decision maker has their “heart in the right place”

  • Does the decision maker have the collectives’ interest at heart (at Edrolo: Is the decision maker being guided by what will most improve education?) or do they have a personal interest in the decision?

    • If doing a Large decision be as transparent as possible on motives and if somehow the outcome is 'helping you / making your life easier' consider explicitly explaining why this is the best outcome for the collective. If you don't address it people can assume the worst. 

• Credibility

  • Making wrong decisions does not inherently erode trust:

• Some people believe that credibility = never changing your mind

• This is true only when you have made the ‘right’ decision

• If you have made the wrong decision this will actually erode your credibility!

• “Only those who can change their mind, change the world.” DA OR “Those who never change their mind never change anything.” Churchill

• However, we all make wrong decisions sometimes! This means at least some of the time we should be openly communicating about how we were wrong!

• 1. Work out if you are wrong

• You probably are wrong in some way! 

• It’s unlikely you were able to perfectly predict everything

• We find what we are looking for

• 2. Work out how wrong you are

  • Try to quantify this

  • Technique to help quantify: identify how many of your core assumptions proved to be incorrect

• 3. Work out why you are wrong

  • Again, reviewing your assumptions used to make the decision is a good place to start

  • Ask questions to dig down deep into the root cause

• 4. Deliver appropriate comms

  • This is the clutch bit!

  • In an upside down way, communicating how you are wrong can actually increase credibility. What the!?!

    • If you communicate openly and with humility/vulnerability this can increase people’s trust in you

    • They know that if something goes wrong, they can trust that you’ll be open about it rather than sweeping it under the carpet

  • Use the information gathered in steps 2 and 3 to communicate

  • The more wrong you were, the more you should communicate!

Summary

• Decision Outcome = 1. Belief in Fair Process * 2. Trust in Decision Maker * 3. Decision Made 

• Commitment to Implementation of Decision = 1. Belief in Fair Process * 2. Trust in Decision Maker

• Long term outcome for company = 1. Belief in Fair Process * 2. Trust in Decision Maker

  • Making the ‘right decisions’ without fair process or trust in decision makers will mean a poor outcome for the company in the long term

  • If the organisation is constantly looking to “Reciprize, Systemtize and Live better Livez” then making wrong decisions with fair process or trust in decision makers will result in long term success

  • Specific decision outcomes are irrelevant to the long term outcome of a company

Ho ho ho, merry feedback-mas

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: 

• Done well, feedback is a gift, it is an opportunity to grow!

• I like gifts. Gifts = good!

• Gifts beget gifts. If you want gobs of gifts: 

  • 1. Make sure you are good at receiving gifts (feedback). 

  • 2. Get good at finding gifts. 

  • 3. Wrap gifts well (ie word your feedback giving well)

  • 4. Give lots of gifts, as doing this means you are more likely to receive gifts :) 

• Jingle: ho ho ho, merry feedback-mas. Why every day can and should be christmas :) 

Preamble: 

Aristotle - “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”

They say that personal growth is one of the top three things that delivers happiness. One key part of ‘personal’ growth is getting feedback from others. I’ve been thinking about feedback and how to do it well. This blog will talk to three aspects of feedback: 

• Receiving feedback. 

• Ascertaining feedback. 

• Giving feedback. 

For context this blog was written in December 2017, hence the ‘christmas theme’. There are not intended to be any implied religious tones, it’s just a bit of a fun analogy :).

Details:

Receiving feedback:

• The continuum. 

  • Poor: When receiving feedback act like you are under attack, make up explanations as to why what is being said is incorrect. Even perhaps ‘return fire’ and say ‘well you aren’t so great yourself, have you noticed this [insert negative feedback]’.

    • Internal (ie the person receiving the feedback): I think you want to ‘lean in’ to the feedback and try to be as open as possible to hearing what is being said and try to see what truth there is and what can be actioned on the back of it. So you want your mindset to be as ‘open’ to growth as possible. I’ve personally found that this is quite hard to do but that as I try to treat feedback as a ‘gift’ I’ve been able to get better at this. 

    • External (ie the person giving the feedback): acting this way can mean that the person giving feedback is actively discouraged from giving feedback again in the future. This could rob you of the opportunity to grow in the future. 

  • Good: Feedback is a gift, it is an opportunity to grow. Be actively thankful and make the person providing the feedback feel like they have given you a gift. 

    • This means that they want to give feedback again in the future. 

  • Neutral is in the middle of ‘good’ and ‘poor’. haha, very insightful duncan :P. 

• Comments: 

  • I believe if you have feedback for someone you should provide it as not doing so is robbing them of the opportunity to grow. So not giving constructive / positive feedback is actually being a ‘bad friend / coworker / etc’. 

• What is the process I try to follow when receiving feedback:

  • When receiving feedback be as welcoming as possible and try to listen. No pushing back. 

  • ‘Actively listen’: ask qualifying questions, try to really get to the nub of what someone is saying (unfortunately in the past I’ve found I’ve only say 60% understood what someone was saying). 

  • Once you and the other party believe you understand the feedback provided thank them for giving you this gift. 

  • Then say you’ll consider this and come back to them with next steps. 

  • What to do when considering: 

    • Decide how much you agree with the feedback provided, I find that there is always something useful in the feedback, sometimes it’s 90% on point, but sometimes only 25%. If things aren’t on point this is typically because the feedback provider has partial context. 

    • “Don’t try to decide if the feedback is right or wrong, try to find out what you can learn from the feedback.” I find that people can decide eg that they disagree with 20% of the feedback and then write off all of the feedback. This is robbing yourself of the opportunity to learn! 

  • If i agree 80%+ 

    • I then go back and say I ‘agree’ with feedback. 

    • Thank them again for the feedback.

    • Tell them what I plan to do in the future regarding the feedback

    • Ask them to please help me implement the changes and point out if I’m not doing what I agree. 

  • If I agree less than 80%

    • I go back and explain what I feel might not be on point with explanation. 

    • Then see what the feedback provider has to say. 

    • Hopefully you get to a landing but it might need time for both parties to digest, clarify etc. 

    • Once you have landed on what is ‘real’ then make a plan for what to do. 

• Summary: 

  • When ‘receiving feedback’ you want to be the best ‘gift recipient’. Or ‘not a spoilt brat’. 

  • ‘make the person who provided you with feedback feel like they gave you a gift, they feel energised after providing feedback’

  • This should mean that you take on the feedback better and get more gifts (feedback) in the future. Gifts = good! 

Ascertaining feedback: 

• What levels of confidence are there? 

  • Low : <60%

  • Medium: 60 - 80%

  • High: 80%+ 

• How do you find things to provide feedback on / increase your levels of confidence? 

  • Observing

  • Investigating:

    • asking probing questions like councilor, ie ‘hey, what is the reason you said / did this?’. ‘Can you add some colour around [insert point]?’ etc etc. 

  • Collaborating: speaking to others to second opinion

    • If you are speaking to others in an effort to uncover and then to help that person (eg say it to them, incept them) this is a wonderful supportive thing. 

    • Speaking about someone behind their back without an intent to help them (aka bitching / politics) is not cool!

• What do you do at different levels of confidence to increase confidence:

  • Option 1: continue observing - gather more information to move to a medium before you say something (see above)

  • Option 2: investigating: ‘Hey Duncan what was the reason you did this?’

  • Option 3: collaborating

  • Option 4: a combination of all of the above. 

• Summary: 

  • you want to be the best gift creator. Or ‘elf’. 

  • ‘Find the best gifts and find many of them.’ I have the best gifts...

Giving feedback: 

• I’ve just developed this levels framework: 

• 1. Ruinous Empathy:

  • This is where you have some feedback for someone but you don’t tell them eg because it’s easier to avoid doing so. 

  • As Kim Scott (of Radical Candour notoriety) will tell you ‘this is not on’. I agree. Doing this will annoy you (as the person likely will continue the behaviour unaware) and rob the person of an opportunity to grow. 

• 2. Alain De botton - “Arguments in relationships are often one partner trying to teach the other something about themselves.” This is feedback by emotion without explanation. 

  • An argument where you don’t give feedback on what caused you to be annoyed. The other person should just somehow know. 

  • In a romantic relationship: “They should somehow just know. And if they don't know they don't love me.”

  • At work parallel: being frustrated visibly in a meeting without providing any explanation. 

    • Again, this one isn’t great. Feedback should be appropriate emotion + appropriate explanation. 

• 3. Insulting feedback

  • Feedback provided with spite. It’s antagonistic and will often make the feedback receiver not receptive and / or dislike the person providing feedback. 

• 4. Feedback with insufficient explanation

• 5. Feedback with appropriate explanation at appropriate time

  • Please note there are different types of this one. Here is how I view this: 

    • 5.1 ‘Soft and soon’: you provide really gentle feedback and pose it as a question. I normally expect to have to provide feedback 3-5 times for something to click with someone. 

      • Providing feedback to someone is an opportunity for you to strengthen your relationship with someone… and to worsen it. 

      • It’s really important to make sure you don't overstep the mark with someone as this can undo lots of good work. 

    • 5.2 ‘direct and full frontal’: only if you high relationship strength and the person is ‘ready for feedback on this point’. 

• 6. Inception 

  • This is where you help the person realise the feedback without providing it directly. You ‘incept’ them. 

  • How do you do this? 

    • ‘investigating’ (see above) - By asking soft probing questions you can often get the person to realise something.

    • ‘planting idea with someone’ - you specifically deconstruct something and feed someone one piece at a time when they are ready. It might be a matter of three steps from where they are so you give them 1 or 2 step and then ask them to ponder. They make the jump to step 3. Incepted :) 

    • ‘Orthogonal’ - you ask an adjacent question about someone / thing else which has parallels for what you are really trying to talk about. 

      • Example 1: let’s say you think there might be a better way for ‘person A’ to go about ‘activity x’. ‘You could say ‘hey, person A, do you think that the way person B does activity x  with approach C is a good way to do things?’ Then you see what they say. Then you might say ‘I was speaking to person B and we talked about doing ‘activity x’ with approach D instead of approach C, what do you think about this?’. 

      • Example 2: ‘do you think that activity A is something person X enjoys?’ when what you are really wanting to know is ‘does the person you are speaking to like activity A’. They volunteer things and open up much more and you can have a conversation.  

• 7. Working together collaboratively

  • Eg you work with another person to help someone realise something. This might mean two people provide feedback to someone at the same time. 

  • Or you set up someone doing certain actions and another person doing a different lot of actions. Ie multiple touch points. 

• Comments:

  • I’ve found that giving feedback that is received as a ‘gift’ is really hard. Done well I’ve found it can really strengthen a relationship, done poorly it can really hurt one :(. 

  • One of the reasons I wrote this blog is to try and ‘level up’ in how I think about doing this, ie to improve my gift wrapping skills! 

• Summary:

  • So you want to be the best ‘gift discoverer’ and then best ‘gift packager and giver’. Or you want to be a great ‘santa’. 

  • ‘Make your feedback be perceived as a ‘gift’ and not a ‘shit sandwich’ ‘

When do you give feedback and how to do you give feedback? 

• Eg do you wait until you have 80%+ confidence to speak to someone about something? 

  • I used to think this but now I feel it depends. 

  • Eg if I’m below 60% confidence on a possible piece of feedback you can just ask softly ‘I was wondering why you said / did this?’ And then you can get to the ‘root’ of something and see if there is feedback to be provided. Eg you are ‘investigating’ if there is actually any feedback, I try to do this all the time now. So much fun :). 

• How do you give feedback? 

  • Ideally you are only doing actions 5, 6 & 7 from above. 

  • What are the key variables I try to weigh: 

    • 1. How much confidence you have on feedback

    • 2. How ready someone is to receive feedback on this topic. 

  • You basically need to custom craft a solution depending on the feedback, person and timing. 

• The core resource everyone has is themselves, so if you ‘grow’ then you can get more done. So basically investing in ‘giving gifts’ and ‘actioning gifts’ is likely one of the highest ROI things you can do. I’ve been investing more time into ‘gifts’ and feel that is has been wisely spent, I think I want to spend more and more time on it in the future :). 

Alright, summary summary: 

• The parts of feedback: 

  • Receiving feedback => ‘not a spoilt brat’

  • Ascertaining feedback => ‘elf’

  • Giving feedback => ‘santa’

• So… you want to be ‘not a spoilt brat’ ‘elf’ ‘santa’:). Yes, I’m quite happy with this one :). Should I get a t-shirt made up somehow symbolising this? A ‘gift’ to myself about ‘gifts’, how wonderfully meta :). 

• Gifts beget gifts. The better we get at feedback the more and higher quality gifts should be given and received. Gifts = good. Gifts = yay. Gifts = woo hoo!

• Ho ho ho, merry feedback-mas everyone!!!!

… ok some more:

Every day can be christmas and your get to be every participant :)

• The joy of receiving a gift (feedback) - joy

• The joy of giving a gift (feedback) - joy

• And the joy of making sure it's a gift not a shit sandwich. Happy not unhappy. 

• "Happy, not unhappy, joy joy". OK I think I've gone a little overboard on engagement here... 

… I also thought about rewriting a christmas carol… but I think it’s time to do something else. This is as far as I got: 

• “It's beginning to feel a lot like christmas, gifts are everywhere, edrollers are experiencing joy, being happy not unhappy…”

Leaders produce more leaders, not more followers

By Hannah Liu. To see all blogs click here.

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." —Ralph Nader

• We're all leaders in some form. It's easy to think that getting things done is the ultimate goal, and therefore it's easy to fall into the trap of doing things for people, rather than growing people.

• We often see and act on what's directly in front of us, rather than acting on and optimising for the long term.

"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things." –Ronald Reagan

• Not trying to put words into Mr. Reagan's mouth, my interpretation of 'gets the people to do the greatest things' means giving people the tools and the space to learn, so they can do the great things:

  • L1 => do everything yourself

  • L2 => do everything yourself but show people after the fact what you did

  • L3 => co-work with others to get things done

  • L4 => set appropriate parameters and give appropriate support (leave, push, support) to allow others to solve things

  • L5 => replace yourself

  • L6 => replace yourself with others who can replace themselves etc

    • ie. make redundancy redundant

• It can feel like: working with others = decreased speed + decreased quality

• When actually: not working with others = decreased speed + decreased quality

  • growing others = long term(growing speed + growing quality)

    • not increased, but constantly growing

"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others." —Jack Welch

**For funsies, a quote that didn't make the cut this time (for obvious reasons i think): "You don’t lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership." –Dwight Eisenhower

Loyal vs Disloyal Opposition. - there will always be opposition, it’s just a question of it's loyal or disloyal opposition!

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

One sentence summary: not only will there always be opposition, you want opposition. Done well loyal opposition improves the world, your company and yourself. If you don’t make provision for loyal opposition you will get disloyal opposition. 

Summary:

Where did the idea of “Loyal vs Disloyal Opposition” come from?

• I did a free online course from Yale called “Moral Foundations of Politics.” I HIGHLY recommend, so epic! 

• Yale Professor Shapiro purports in a country there will always be opposition, a well functioning democracy has ‘Loyal Opposition’, a poorly functioning country has ‘disloyal opposition’. 

• I really liked the concept of ‘Loyal vs Disloyal Opposition’ so I decided to try and transplant it for startups.

  • The words ‘Loyal vs Disloyal’ and ‘Opposition’ can be quite confronting. 

  • For instance you might want to change it to be ‘Helpful vs unhelping different points of view’. 

  • I thought about doing this, but overall I decided to use Professor Shapiro’s “Loyal vs Disloyal Opposition” language. Please read in a positive sum way! 

Loyal vs Disloyal Opposition (full details below):  

If someone is in opposition, it means they have points of contention. This is likely going to happen a lot, it’s less about whether or not you agree, but how you oppose

• Opposition options:

  • No view

  • Views that doesn’t improve others view (disloyal opposition)

  • View that improves others view (loyal opposition)

• Foster loyal opposition, foster opposition to be in the open. 

• You can’t always agree for everything, many times we need to ‘disagree but commit’. 

• Jingle: Loyal opposition = devine disagreement

How to foster Loyal Opposition (full details below):

• Inviting others to try and ‘find holes’ in your ideas

• Have fair process. 

  • Legitimate decisions != right decisions. 

  • Legitimate decisions = fair process.

• Model vulnerability and fail openly (you are fallible and make mistakes)

• Act magnanimously

• Try to demonstrate being ‘loyal opposition’ for others. 

Cohesion vs Correctness (an orthogonal view on ‘loyal vs disloyal opposition’)

• “If you are pointed in the right direction it doesn’t matter how slow you are going you are making progress. If you are pointed in the wrong direction it doesn’t matter how fast you are going you are not making progress.”

• It doesn’t matter how cohesive you are if you are pointed in the wrong direction, you’ll be dead at some point. We all have blind spots and ego distortions, IMO no one can know what correctness is by themselves. We all need others to help us figure out the correct way to point (ie loyal opposition). 

• Also, who says there is a tradeoff between cohesion and correctness? 

• You need to have mutually positive sum ‘helping each other point in the right direction’ aka correctness. 

• If you know someone is here to help you you have cohesion. This can mean them telling you are you pointed in the wrong direction. 

• Cohesion * Correctness = Loyal Opposition. 

• Disloyal Opposition = No cohesion * Correctness

• Disloyal Opposition = No correctness

• You need to foster people having a view on what is ‘correct’ and helping each other update their view on correctness. Not doing so is stupidness! 

• “The only thing you can be right about is being wrong.” The only question is ‘what percentage wrong you are’. To be less wrong foster loyal opposition inside yourself and others! 

• I'm not worried about being offended. I'm not worried about being told my idea doesn't make sense. I'm worried about not being told my idea doesn't make sense. 

• In short, I'm much more worried about correctness than I am about cohesion. However you can, and should, have both. 

• IMO, look for what you can learn, not what you can be offended by. Try to see what you can learn. Learning quite often opens new ideas, which means our views can shift over time. We can learn a lot from different views, we can only learn a limited amount from same views.

• For fun:

• IMO don't try to look if you can be offended or not by something. Try to see what you can learn. 

• IMO if you look as hard as you can to try and be offended you'll find something… That quite possibly wasn’t intentional. 

  • Doing this means people become scared of saying anything. 

  • I disagree with so much of the stuff I thought a year ago, I hope to disagree with much of what I think today in a year. I don't think my past views were offensive, I hope that I've learned something. 

  • The only way I’ve found to not offend anyone is to not say or write anything. 

• What I find offensive is people being unnecessarily offended… having said this, best to try not to unnecessarily offend people.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Details:

Facts vs Ideas

• This is a breakdown of knowledge I like: there are Facts and Ideas 

  • Fact = there is a right / wrong answer. Eg my coffee cost $4. Eg Duncan is 35. 

  • Idea = there is no right / wrong answer. Eg How to make the best coffee? Eg How should Duncan spend the next 35 years of his life?

• “Science progresses one death at a time.”

  • Physics example: there was Newtonian Physics (gravity etc) => Relativity => Quantum Mechanics => String Theory etc. 

  • So even things like ‘Physics’ are ‘Ideas’. Ie can be updated again and again.  

• Some key ‘Idea’ questions: 

  • What does it mean to live a good life? 

  • What is the common good? 

  • What is a quality friendship? 

  • What is the best way to improve secondary education :) ? 

• So, an ‘Idea’ can never have a ‘right’ answer, but only ever hopefully better (upgraded) ways of explaining eg physics, eg how to live a good life etc. As such you want people to help you upgrade your Ideas. 

  • Loyal opposition = 

    • 1. Engages with you to help upgrade your idea

    • 2. Will talk with others about how to improve your idea when you are not there WITH the goal to help you and the idea (ie in a positive sum fashion)

  • Disloyal opposition = 

    • 1. Doesn’t tell you a possible way to upgrade your idea

    • 2. Talks behind your back about why they don’t like your idea not with the intention to help you or the idea (ie in a negative sum fashion)

• As an ‘Idea’ can never not be improved, people should have multiple different views on the idea (ie opposition). 

Pluralism = the recognition and affirmation of diversity within a political body, which permits the peaceful coexistence of different interests, convictions, and lifestyles.

• We want healthy pluralism AKA people with different views on Ideas that can talk with each other in a positive sum fashion. 

• You want to have multiple schools of thought that improve each other.  “As iron sharpens iron, ideas sharepen ideas and people sharpen people.”

  • Be it in economics with: Keynesian Economics vs Neo Classical Economics vs Modern Monetary Theory etc

  • Be it in politics with eg: Parliamentary system (UK, Australia, Germany) vs Presidential System (US, Mexico). The major difference between these two systems is that in a Presidential system, the executive leader, the President, is directly voted upon by the people (Or via a body elected specifically for the purpose of electing the president, and no other purpose), and the executive leader of the Parliamentary system, the Prime Minister, is elected from the legislative branch directly.

  • Be it for romantic relationships: monogamy vs polygamy 

  • Etc etc. 

• “Everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere.”

  • Direct instructions vs problem based learning

  • Teacher led learning vs student led learning

  • Having grades vs no grades 

  • Etc etc

• As much diversity of thought (aka pluralism) as possible IMO is totally key to good quality problem solving, aka Idea updating. 

• Loyal vs Disloyal Opposition: 

  • Loyal opposition = 

    • 1. Puts forward different schools of thought for you to consider

    • 2. Helps you see the areas where your way school of thought (model) is hindering more than it is helping

  • Disloyal opposition = 

    • 1. Does not accept there can be multiple schools of thought to approach a problem and is pushing their ideology 

    • 2. Does not point out where your school of thought might be lacking. 

Blind Spots and Ego Distortions

• We all have blind spots and ego distortions for how we see the world. By definition we can’t ourselves see them as they are ‘blind spots’ and ‘ego distortions’. We can only find ‘blind spots’ and ‘ego distortions’ if others point them out to us. 

• Not only is there always opposition, you want opposition.

  • Why will there be opposition? Because we all have blind spots and ego distortions meaning you will have a different view to others. Opposition = multiple points of view. 

  • Why do you want opposition?  Because we all have blind spots and ego distortions you only find out about them when people point them out to you.

• Loyal opposition = will point out blind spots and ego distortions. 

• Disloyal opposition = lets you walk onto AirForce One with toilet paper attached to our shoe ;) 

Whose job is it to foster loyal opposition? Everyone :)

• Leadership lens

  • If leadership fosters disloyal opposition then leadership fosters the downfall of their company / country. 

  • If you don’t have quality Ideas you’ll have bad outcomes. 

    • “The first version of everything is sh1t.” Hemmingway. 

    • Ideas are improved through Loyal Opposition. 

  • If you have disloyal opposition in a company it’ll eventually cause disharmony. 

• Everyone lens

  • If you don’t agree with a government policy it is your civil duty to do something about it (eg protest, eg vote them out). 

  • It's not: if you believe in the leader then you must follow the leader. 

  • It’s: if you believe in the leader then you must tell the leader what you think… ideally in a positive sum way! 

So, there will always be opposition (different points of view to Ideas). But not just this, you want loyal opposition to help improve Ideas, point out ego distortions and blind spots and fosters healthy pluralism. The only question is whether there is disloyal or loyal opposition.

Thoughts on how to foster loyal opposition: 

• Devil Undisqualified Decisions - inviting people to try and ‘find holes’ in your ideas. 

  • “You have nothing to fear from the truth… but it doesn’t mean the truth won’t hurt.”

  • If your idea isn’t a good one, the world will tell you at some point. The sooner you find out the better. So try to foster a culture where in meetings you ask people to try and find holes in ideas. 

• The Decision Dichotomy - 

  • Model: 

    • 1. Good decision * 2. Fair process => Happy outcome

    • 1. Good decision * 2. Unfair / no process => Unhappy outcome

    • 1. Bad decision * 2. Fair process => Happy outcome

    • Comment: 

      • Fair process is totally key! 

      • Legitimate decisions != right decisions

      • Legitimate decisions = fair process

  • What is fair process? See the blog :) 

• Modelling vulnerability and openly failing (that you are fallible and make mistakes)

  • People will ‘disagree but commit’ as long as you admit openly when you are wrong and try to examine why you have been wrong to not repeat the mistake. 

  • Once a decision has been made, IMO it’s far more important to look for why it might have been the wrong decision, than why it was right. No matter how many things say it is the right decision, just 1 thing that saying it was wrong likely means that it is wrong. 

  • Confirmation bias = the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. 

  • Try to lean out of ‘confirmation bias’. 

• Act magnanimously: never biting / acting hurt towards someone for providing opposition. 

  • “Freedom of speech is the master value because it is the value that allows us to update all other values.” Sam Harris. 

  • It can be natural to have one’s ego hurt if someone is pointing out flaws in an idea you have come up with. However “Learning = Living. Denial = Dying.” TM DA :) 

• Provide loyal opposition to others

  • “Be the change you want to see.” Gandhi. 

  • Do as I say… and hopefully do! 

• Sending around blogs like this. 

  • The blogs are attempting to be cultural epithets. 

• Searching for truth. Truth is terrible, truth is terrific! 

  • “It's not about if this feedback is right / wrong, but what can be learned from it.”

  • “It’s not about if this idea is right / wrong, but how it can be useful.”

• You openly have a nobel mission for society (heart is in the right place) and demonstrate that your heart is in the right place. 

  • People attach a narrative (why) to what you do. I’ve found it’s good to state explicitly your ‘why’ as much as possible and have people question not just the ‘what’ but also the ‘why’. 

External vs internal opposition - just for a bit of fun :) 

• External Opposition = other people providing opposition

• Internal Opposition = you providing opposition to yourself. 

• Loyal internal opposition

  • “The work required to have an opinion means you can argue against yourself better than the other side can.” Shane Parrish. 

    • “I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.” — Charlie Munger

    • “We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side.” — Charlie Munger

    • “The ability to destroy your ideas rapidly instead of slowly when the occasion is right is one of the most valuable things. You have to work hard on it. Ask yourself what are the arguments on the other side. It’s bad to have an opinion you’re proud of if you can’t state the arguments for the other side better than your opponents. This is a great mental discipline.” — Charlie Munger

  • “If your political views align 100% with one political party you are not a clear thinker.”

    • If your views align 100% with one school of thought you are not a clear thinker. 

    • If you are only using one school of thought you are not a clear thinker. 

  • You need to know what would be needed to change your view on an idea. 

    • As a reminder, IMO all ideas can be upgraded. So you need to be looking to upgrade ideas. 

    • If you don’t know what is needed to change your view then you will likely miss many opportunities to upgrade. 

    • Worse still, you might think ‘there is nothing that could change my view on this idea’. This is being an ideologue. 

      • “Don’t be an ideologue (wedded to an ideology). Be a pragmatist, do what works!”

    • “The only thing you can be right about is being wrong.” Aka that your idea can be upgraded. 

    • “There are two types of people: those who don’t know and those who know they don’t know.” 

    • IMO once you have a view on an idea you should spend 80% of your time thinking about the idea trying to see how you could be wrong / upgrade the idea. 

      • Eg I believe 2020 Mustang has 2x+ instantly recognisable irrefutable dealmakers which should eventually means 80%+ market share. I now spend 80% of my time trying to see how this could be wrong. I do this by 1. Intuition: looking to see if things are off. 2. Qualitative: speaking to external teachers and schools. 3. Quantitative: if we don’t get 30%+ market share this year I’ll need to reassess if this hypothesis is true. 

• Disloyal internal opposition 

  • You being your own worst enemy. 

  • You don’t allow yourself to believe your ideas are valuable. 

  • You don’t try to debate the other side of an argument internally.

  • You feel strongly about an idea and then subconsciously allow yourself to fit that idea into places where it hinders more than it helps. “Everything works somewhere, nothing works everywhere.”

Ok, enough! 

Learning Vs Innovating - don't learn about innovating the hard way

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Learning = know what the next step is (destination) and known path to next step (path to destination)

• This is what the vast majority of secondary and tertiary education is.

Innovating = do not know what the next step is or path to the destination is

• You are doing something you have never done before without a 'teacher' to show you the destination and path to destination.

• It might well be that no one has ever done what you are attempting to do before.

One sentence summary: your expectations for Learning should not be the same as they are for Innovating

• I find that often people don't differentiate between Learning and Innovating and have the same expectations. Unrealistically high expectations = unhappiness.

Graphical form of expectations:

• Innovating expectations

• For Innovating you don't know the destination or path there so most times your first solution doesn't move the game forward.

• Learning expectations

• Learning you know the destination and path there, so if you don't make progress on V1 something is off.

IMO Innovating with a purpose = one of the best things I know of

IMO Learning = boring (ok that is a bit of an over exaggeration)

Jingle: You need to learn that Innovating != Learning. Don't be innovative and make the mistake of thinking Learning = Innovating.

Where does passion come from? You can create, grow and sustain passion!

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

One sentence summary: It’s possible to start out not passionate about a job and end up being super passionate; passion at work can be cultivated; one of the best ways to cultivate passion is by working on something that makes the world better. 

Summary: 

Standard career advice: “Work on what you are passionate about.”

• But what if you aren’t passionate about anything? 

• What if you can’t make money from your passion? 

• And what if your passion changes? 

Input Side vs Output Side Passion: 

• Option 1 - Passion on Input Side: Passion * Work => Happy

• Option 2 - Passion on Output Side: Meaning * Work => Passion + Happy

  • Meaning (purpose) = helping make the world better 

• Comment

  • What what what? You can get passion from the output side of work? Ie you start off not passionate but become passionate about work over time? 

    • I’ve found that one can become passionate about work overtime if the work is meaningful (makes the world better). 

    • I didn’t start out passionate about Edrolo (a company I co-founded), but now I’m deeply passionate about Edrolo. 

    • Each year I’ve slowly become more and more passionate about Edrolo as meaning and progress increase. It’s honestly the most beautiful thing! 

• Jingle: It’s not “work on what you are passionate about.” It’s “work on making the world better as then you’ll become passionate about work and have lasting happiness :)!”

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Details:

I have found that passion can be cultivated and grow year on year: 

• Passion Magnitude = 1. Meaning (making world better) * 2. Magnitude of possible improvement (eg where can you get to in long term) * 3. Progress each year

  • At Edrolo passion started low for me and has grown massively

• Each year at Edrolo IMO we’ve been able to find ways to improve humanity more than I realised was possible. Ie magnitude of possible improvement today is WAY more than I thought it was a year ago :). 

• This increase in improvements to humanity is intrinsically linked with my growing in passion in the work I do at Edrolo

• One Edrolo goal: that the magnitude of improvement to education increases each year, hopefully in an exponential fashion. 

  • I honestly believe this has been the case. 

    • 1 lens is the evolution of our products: TM > TMEM > Mustang 1 > Mustang 2 etc

      • Each time the new products are adding more and more value

• Outcome: combining all of these things my passion from edrolo has gone from ‘moderate’ to ‘massive’ :) !!

• Comment: 

  • I didn't know this was possible!!

  • 10 years ago Duncan thought you were born with an innate passion for something or you weren’t. 

    • This is a fixed mindset approach and when you think about it, it's kind of ridiculous

      • How could genetics really be able to fixate you on something as complex as passion and make you incapable of changing your focus

  • IMO it's a crime that people don't know you can cultivate passion! That you can go from indifferent about something to out of control passionate. 

  • IMO a life with passion is better than a life without passion.

  • Everyone can have passion and meaning in their life. You just need to give it to yourself.

  • Helping make the world better IMO will make you passionate about what you do. Giving to others is giving to yourself. The best things are selfless and selfish.

Is “Option 1 - passion on input side” or “Option 2 - passion on output side” better? 

• IMO “Option 2 - passion on output side”

• All else equal, it's better to have ‘Passion, Happy and Meaning’ (Option 2) than just ‘Passion and Happy’ (Option 1). 

  • Option 1 - passion on input side: Passion * Work => Happy

  • Option 2 - passion on output side: Meaning * Work => Passion + Happy

• Lasting vs Ephemeral Passion

  • Passion based on ‘personal preference’ = open to change (ie ephemeral) 

    • Passion here is not being derived from the impact you are making, it is what you are innately interested in

      • If you are unable to make an impact on the world and strengthen your passion it may be fleeting or at least not as strong as you could otherwise achieve

  • Passion based on ‘making the world better’ = lasting (eg I might decide I really like fashion and then change my mind… but it’s very unlikely that I would feel that improving education is ever not important)

It’s not “work on what you are passionate about.” It’s “work on making the world better as then you’ll become passionate about work and have lasting happiness :)!”

• Doing ‘meaningful’ (aka making the world better) work is one of the best life hacks I know of. 

• One model I like for a Good Life = Health + Enough Money + Friends + Purpose

  • Doing meaningful work can help you will all of these outputs

    • Meaning * Work => happy at work which is a solid foundation for mental health

    • Meaning * Work => normally engenders one liking work => solid foundation to do well at work and thereby have enough money

    • Meaning * Work => building something together is a wonderful canvas on which to build quality relationships. Of course you should have quality relationships outside of work but best to have them at work as well. 

    • Meaning * Work * Progress => Purpose

• In other words, Meaningful Work can be the cornerstone upon which you build a good life! 

• If you want Meaning and Passion in your life, IMO one approach is to pick a way to help improve the world and get going at improving! It doesn’t matter what it is, just pick something and get started. If you make progress I think you’ll find Meaning and Passion ‘just happen’... And all the other pieces for a good life might become 10x easier to get into place!

Examples - Stories to exhibit where passion can come from. 

• Story 1: Duncan Anderson’s story for Edrolo - believe it or not I wasn’t passionate about Edrolo in the beginning

  • I don’t think there is a ceiling for ‘passion’. You cannot be max 100% passionate about something. Basically, the more passionate I have become, the higher my ability to feel passion. Ie the ceiling just gets further and further away… yay! I life where beauty begets beauty :). I don’t want a AAA life, I want a BBB life ;) 

  • Having said this for the purpose of this story, let's say that one can be -10 to 10 passionate. 

    • -10 you really hate something

    • 0 = indifferent

    • 10 you are turbo passionate about something 

  • Believe it or not I started out 1/10 passionate about Edrolo. I didn’t dislike but I was like ‘yeah, let’s do this’. 

  • Now I am 10/10, Edrolo is the biggest component of who I am personally. I love working at Edrolo because I think it we can have a massive massive impact to humanity (hopefully bigger than any other business ever). 

  • Basically, I thought that the impact to humanity in the beginning was there, but it was ‘replacing revision lectures in term 3 holidays with video versions of this for Year 12’. Ie a small 1/10 impact to humanity = small passion. 

  • I now believe that through our next generation product named ‘Mustang’ alone it’s possible for Edrolo to have a bigger impact to humanity than any business ever. Ie 10/10 impact to humanity = turbo passion. 

  • This is why ‘doing work that makes the world better’ is the best life hack I know of! 

  • Summary: 

    • Working on making the world better has allowed me (Duncan) to become passionate about work. Ie passion has been derived from the output side of work. 

• Story 2: Rex Roseman’s story for Edrolo (written by Rex) - having finished a Science degree at Melbourne University and starting out in video production in (ie not a job that was related to his degree) to now being passionate about Edrolo and really enjoying work that has nothing to do with my degree

  • I started working at Edrolo after finishing my undergrad and feeling rather passionless about where I wanted to go with my career

    • My plan after finishing uni was to work while I figured out which other degree I should rack up more HECS debt with and ultimately get a job

  • I was lucky enough to catch wind of a role at Edrolo in Recording and Editing Team (former name of MPT) where I put my self taught video editing skills to the test

  • Prior to starting at Edrolo I had never worked in an office environment and barely had an idea of what a startup really was

    • At the time I would say I was indifferent to Edrolo’s mission (I definitely didn’t hate education) and was motivated mainly by getting exposed to new skills in video production

  • This all quickly changed once I moved into management a little under a year into starting at Edrolo

    • Since then I have faced many challenges and have had many opportunities to make meaningful contributions towards Edrolo’s mission through my work with the content side of the business

    • Working on improving education is a noble pursuit, making it very easy to derive meaning and purpose from my work 

  • Having the ability to make a meaningful impact on education through my work at Edrolo has certainly converted my indifference into passion

    • I feel lucky to have only ever worked in an environment where passion and meaning has been easy to derive from my day to day

      • Not including my brief time at Woolworths, that was a super passionless vacuum of meaningless shelf stacking…

  • Summary: 

    • Rex started off indifferent (not passionate) about working at Edrolo. 

    • Working on making the world better has allowed Rex to become passionate about work. Ie passion has been derived from the output side of work. 

• Story 3: You have a passion (eg film, eg fashion) but are working in a role at Edrolo that is not related to your passion. What is possible to happen?

  • There is nothing wrong with working on your existing passion. More than that, great you have a passion! 

  • But IMO there is another way to be passionate about what you work on! It is possible to become passionate about work from making the world better. 

  • Work on your passion (eg writing) while working eg at Edrolo and see what happens. 

  • What is key is that I didn’t understand it was possible to become passionate about work because of making the world better. You don’t have to kill off your existing passion, but open yourself up to the idea that passion could come from making the world better. 

  • The other point to make is that you might have preconceived notions of ‘what you like / don’t like’. For example you might think ‘I’ll never like spreadsheets, I don’t ever want to go near them’. 

    • What I’ve found is that spreadsheets as a tool to ‘improve the world’ the world are great great fun problem solving.

    • However, spreadsheets for spreadsheets sake are super boring! 

  • So basically, I try not to think of ‘will I like something / not like something?’ but more ‘is this something that will better help me improve the world?’ I’ve found that I basically like anything that will help me improve the world! 

  • It is of course possible to have more than one passion that you pursue, hopefully though you can cultivate a lot of passion from your work, considering how much time we will dedicate to our careers over our lifetimes. 

• Story 4: You have a passion for education and come to Edrolo

  • Ex teacher at Edrolo: “Duncan, I’ve had more time to think about improving education here in 3 weeks than I did in 10 years as a teacher.” 

  • As a teacher there are so many things needed to ‘just keep the wheels on’. 

  • You might have a passion and be trying to actualise it in one field (eg improve education by being a teacher) but find there is a better avenue to make progress on you passion (eg by making education resources at Edrolo). 

  • At Edrolo there is the space to spend a lot of your time figuring out how to improvement Education and affect change for thousands and maybe one day millions of students, the canvass we have to work with is much much bigger

    • With the ability to make a much bigger magnitude of change in improving the world, you will cultivate much more passion than otherwise was possible

  • Conversely, you might also find that Edrolo isn’t the place for you to actualise your passion, that there is a better avenue. “A place for everything and everything in its place.”

Summary:

• You can create, grow and sustain passion. Passion doesn’t have to be something you are born with. Some innate “calling”. We are using examples from Edrolo here but IMO it can come from anything that is helping the world. Eg climate change, eg human rights, eg mental health, eg helping humans relax with wonderful art (I want 10x seasons of Rick and Morty please!). 

• Here are some ways to improve the world from the UN if you are interested

Solving complexity through simplicity - explaining with equations is enlightening

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: You solve complexity through simplicity. 

• The goal with complexity is to reduce the problem down to a few key variables you can reason with.

• You need to figure out how the variables interact and how you can be wrong. 

• The world is far too complex to be able to understand at full resolution. 

• Complexity => simplicity

  • Complexity = problem space you cannot reason with

  • Complexity => Simplicity = key variables * how they interact 

• All models are wrong (aka are abbreviations of the world), but some are useful. 

Jingle: if you can't make an idea into an equation (model) you don't understand it deeply. 

• Trying to understand the world through making models is literally some of the best fun I know of. 

• When you understand something deeply, you’re able to cater your explanation to the recipient. This is an example.

  • In this example, the neuroscientist has changed his vocabulary and syntax (his language) to accommodate his listener

  • Models allow us to use the same language to express a complex idea to the majority.

Idea Iteration Articulations: 

• L1: verbal description only

• L2: equation

• L3: equation + taxonomy for each variable

• L4: visual representation of equation (aka model)

• L5: machine with flowchart and speed and quality metrics for each node

• L6: L5 + having numbers that flow through each node

Examples of simple “L2: equation” models:

• Progress = Plan * Execution

• Trust = Time * Consistency

• Art = Expression + Meaning

• Despair = Suffering - Meaning

• Anxiety = Uncertainty * Powerlessness

• Disappointment = Expectations - Reality

• Good life = Enough Money + Friends + Health + Purpose

• Happiness = wanting what you have / having what you want

• Emotional Intelligence = Self-awareness + Self-regulation + Social skill + Empathy + Motivation

• Attention = Focus - Distractions

• Pain + Reflection = Progress

• I love little juxtaposition equations as well. Ie change one variable and what happens (aka flexing the model)? I often find it easiest to explain something by comparing it to something else or saying what it isn’t. 

  • Depression vs Sadness

    • Depression = Unhappiness * Not knowing why you are unhappy

    • Sadness = Unhappiness * Knowing why you are unhappy

  • Emotional health (see blog)

    • Emotional health != Feeling only positive emotions

    • Emotional health = Feeling the full spectrum of emotions * In a healthy way

  • Boredom

    • Boredom done well => Relaxation

    • Boredom done poorly => Anxiety

  • Startups

    • Great Team * Bad Market => Market’s reputation in tact

    • Weak Team * Great Market => Market’s reputation in tact

    • Great Team * Great Market => Something special happens

  • Habits vs addictions

    • “First you make your habits, then your habits make you.”

    • Addiction done well => Habit

    • Habit done poorly => Addiction

  • Truth vs Lies

    • “You have nothing to fear from the truth… but that doesn’t mean the truth won’t hurt.”

    • Lie = Sweet in the beginning + Sour in the end

    • Truth = Sour / Sweet in the beginning + Sweet in the end

  • Suffering vs Growth

    • Hardship + No purpose = Suffering

    • Hardship + Purpose = Growth

• Unidirectionality is also a fav thing of mine. Axioms that are mathematically incompatible have an ugly beautifulness that makes me chuckle.

  • Feeling * Reason => Meaning

  • Reason * Meaning => Feeling

  • Smile because you are happy… Or smile and it will make you happy!

  • There is a future blog on this :)

    • Passion * Work => Happy

    • Making the world better * Work => Happy + Passion

• *Aside: I've decided I'm going to try make a blog that is only equations. Sounds like fun!

• Comment: 

  • Seriously, anything, ANYTHING!!!! Can be communicated in an equation / model. 

  • Duncan’s blogs + you = happy :) 

  • No one is saying that these equations are perfect and explain everything, but do they help you understand something you didn’t before? 

    • Good equation => increases understanding

    • Good equation => shows the world from a different point of view (lens) 

    • Bad equation => confuses things

I love love LOVE trying to articulate things. “All I do is articulate and rearticulate.” Does this make me a AAA human? 

• For the purpose of this blog let’s say ideas come in 3 sizes: Small, Medium and Large. 

• IMO for all Medium or Large ideas you should at minimum be able to express them “L1: verbal description only” + “L2: equation”. 

• What level do you go to? Well that is the fun. 

• Examples and process below.

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Details

Process for trying to articulate an idea better: 

• 1. Is the idea and Medium or Large? If Yes then go to ‘2’. 

• 2. Try and push the idea up “Idea Iteration Articulation” levels as far as you can (ie from L1=>L6 if you can)

• 3. Then find the optimal balance for which level of “Idea Iteration Articulations” gives the most value and roll with that

  • Value of articulation = 1. Explanation power of model * 2. Your ability to ‘flex’ (change) the model and understand what is going on [see what I did here? Make a model about models! Meta model mania]

    • 1. Explanation power of model = 1.1 Number of variables * 1.2 How the variables interact * 1.3 quality of MECE

  • You’ll find the balance point where the model has the most value. 

  • Paradoxically the ‘greater’ the absolute explanation power of a model the harder it is to understand / use. So the model might be pretty but it’s useless...  pretty useless! 

  • I normally try to do ‘Occam’s Razor’, ie the simplest solution is the best… but so simple that it can’t explain what is going on isn’t useful either. Ie you solve complexity through simplicity.

  • “Don’t be simply stupid, or pretty useless, be beautifully balanced ;)” TM DA 2019!

Example 1: “L2: equation” at Edrolo (a company I co-founded) one product we are now getting into are textbooks for Years 11&12. 

• We were trying to figure out what the line of minimum sufficiency is for saying yes to building a textbook. 

• The generations: 

  • Generation 1: a product that is better than existing textbook offerings (seriously, I know right!)

  • Generation 2: a product that was 50% better as measured by the growth it provided to a student

  • Generation 3: 1. Everything an existing textbook does + 2. 2x+ Dealmakers

  • Generation 4: 1. Everything an existing textbook does + 2. 2x+ Dealmakers - 3. No dealbreakers

  • Generation 5: 1. Everything an existing textbook does + 2. 2x+ Instantly recognisable dealmakers - 3. No dealbreakers

  • Generation 5: 1. Everything an existing textbook does + 2. 2x+ Instantly recognisable irrefutable dealmakers - 3. No dealbreakers

• Comment: 

  • We have a lot more detail in eg ‘how to find dealmakers’. That has been systemised into a “L5: machine with flowchart and speed and quality metrics for each node”. But that is not for today :)

  • With each new generation of the articulation of ‘minimum sufficiency to greenlight building a textbook’ we’ve found it increasingly easy to (hopefully) make great products. 

  • “The quality of your ability to articulate the problem affects the quality of your solution!”

  • In case it’s not clear, god I love this stuff! 

Example 2: “L3: equation + Taxonomy” there some VCs on this email list so I’ll make up something for you :). Should I invest in a startup or not? 

• *note: I’m just making this up on the spot, so hopefully useful

• V1: an unstructured verbal description of whether you like a startup or not

• V2: Invest in startup = 1. Team * 2. Product * 3. Market 

• V3: V2 + taxonomy for each of the of the variables

  • Taxonomy suggestion: 

    • Dealmaker

    • Nice to have

    • Not nice to have

    • Dealbreaker

  • Eg it doesn’t matter if there are lots of good things about a startup, 1x dealbreaker and it’s game over for investing in them! 

• V4: I’m going to zoom in on the team variable and break it into it’s on mini equation

  • 1. Team = 1.1 Founder market fit * 1.2 Learning machine (ie eats information like no tomorrow) * 1.3 Hectic work ethic * 1.4 Grit

• Comment: 

  • I’m going to stop here making equations for investing in a startup. 

  • What I’ve found is that if you have a base ‘equation’ for which to try explain a ‘problem space’ you can then have a much more useful conversation with people. 

  • If you can hang off your thoughts onto a model you can start to calibrate where things fit. Instead of ‘two ships sailing past each other in the night’ you can see ‘ok person 1 is talking about this part of the equation, person 2 is talking about another part, how do we try and put this altogether?’

  • Example: 

    • Let’s say you are discussing a startup and you are talking about the founders 

      • Person 1: I don’t like the team as I don’t think they have ‘1.1 Founder market fit’ 

      • Person 2: I like the founders because they are ‘1.2 Learning machines’. 

    • How can you use an equation + taxonomy to help here? 

      • You discuss what level each person’s point about the founders are on the taxonomy. 

      • Person 1’s ‘1.1 Founder market fit’ => Not nice to have. 

      • Person 2’s ‘1.2 Learning machines’ => Dealmaker. 

        • ‘1.2 Learning machine’ level is a ‘Dealmaker’ because over time the founders will improve “1.1 Founder market fit” as they learn about the market (they are learning machines after all) and as such you are good to move ahead. 

Example 3: “L4: visual representation of equation (aka model)”

• See this blog for a flowchart

Example 4: “L5: machine with flowchart and speed and quality metrics for each node”

• See this blog

Example 5: “L6: L5 + having numbers that flow through each node”

• You’ll need to come and work at either Edrolo or OwlTail to see these. 

• We are always hiring at both! 

Relaxing Stress Strategies - why having a Plan Z should mean you’ll never be dead!

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Summary: 

• It’s not “hope for the best, plan for the worst”. 

• It’s “plan for the worst, so you can do your best”. 

  • Planning for the worst => lowering stress as you can see how to get through the worst case scenario

  • Lower stress => execute better (do your best) so it’s much less likely that worst case scenario will occur

Details:

 “The person who stresses before it is necessary stresses more than is necessary”… but what if it’s never necessary to stress?

The vast majority of us don’t work in life or death circumstances. We are not doctors, no one is going to die. So there is no reason to stress big. 

“Don’t sweat the small things… and everything is a small thing.”

I see one of the key hacks to a good life being ‘trying to make the world better’. If you want to make the world better you will need responsibility / ownership to change part of it.

• Make world better => need to take Responsibility / Ownership to change part of the world

• Responsibility / Ownership done well => Meaning and Passion (see “Where does passion come from?”)

• Responsibility / Ownership done poorly => Stress (eg deadline pressure)

“Planning is essential, plans are useless.” Winston Churchill

• Planning is essential = you need to have an idea of where you are trying to get to (destination) and how you plan on getting there. 

• Plans are useless = No plan survives first contact with reality. 

  • basically all plans will need to be updated significantly to either change the destination or the path to destination. 

  • It is near impossible to predict the future, if you are not changing your plan you will most likely not get to your destination

“It's not what you worry about that kills you, it’s what you don’t worry about that gets you!”

• Worry != Stress

• Worry is looking forward to potential problems that you can find solutions for

  • I.e worrying triggers problem solving

• Stress is a physiological response brought about by anxiety and not having an adequate plan to solve your problems

• We should be worrying, we shouldn’t be stressing

No plan / Bad Plan = Stress

• Planning and updating your plans are essential! 

What makes a Good Plan? I think you should have at minimum a Plan A and a Plan Z. But likely a Plan A, Plan B and Plan Z… or ABZ, yes you should all have abs (ABZ), haha! If you don’t have ABZ (abs), plan to go to the gym and work on it! You want abs at the beach and ABZ at work :)! Ok I’ll stop. 

• What is a Good Plan A?

  • Components: 

    • 1. can see the Destination

    • 2. have a path to the Destination

    • 3. can get to the Destination within the time you have 

  • If you don’t have these 3 components then you have a ‘Bad Plan’. Bad Plan = Stress. IMO you need to be working to get these 3 components ASAP. 

• What is a Good Plan B?

  • This is normally the ‘Destination’ from Plan A but with a significant increase in resourcing. Ie we need to call in reinforcements. 

  • So Plan B is that you can flex up resourcing as required.

  • Ideally each mission critical part of your business has appropriate redundancy (aka ability to increase resourcing) (see Bulletproofing Your Business - “the person who does not have time to help has no advantage over the person who cannot help.”)

  • If there is a more efficient way to get to the Destination then that should be Plan A! 

    • *aside: having said this, necessity is the mother of all invention. The number of times I come up with a better plan (eg path to destination) because I have had to frankly scares me. How come I couldn’t see this earlier?!

• What is a Good Plan Z?

  • Basically imagine the worst case scenario, eg failures of multiple mission critical components of your business which means you cannot get to the ‘Destination’ from Plan A. This means you will have to let people down. 

  • Good Plan Z = running the worst case scenario to see what you do and how everything will be ok (ie not death of company). 

    • This is worrying, you need to think about all the possible problems and trigger your ability to solve for them

    • It’s not going to be pretty, but if you are still standing then that is a Good Plan Z. 

  • Early in my entrepreneurial experience I just refused to even let myself contemplate that ‘worst case scenario was possible’. I would say to myself things like ‘we will not let this happen’. 

  • I’ve now found that systematically ‘hoping for the best, but planning for the worst’ means I can massively minimise stress.

    • Hope for the best = Good Plan A and Plan B

    • Plan for the worst = Good Plan Z (you live despite everything going to sh1t)

  • To repeat: if I’ve tried hard to plan for what happens in the worst case scenario and, while clearly not optimal, the company doesn’t die (Good Plan Z) I stress 10% as much when executing Plan A / B. 

Stress makes everything worse: physical health, creativity, sleep... execution of Plan A. 

• Little logic tree: 

  • Outcome = ABZ Plans * Execution

  • Having a quality ABZ Plans=> Lower stress

  • Lower stress => Better execution of Plan A

  • Better execution of Plan A => Lower chance you need Plan Z :)))) (aka worst case scenario will eventuate)

• Comment: 

  • I used to not want to think about the worst case outcomes (Plan Z) because I thought it was defeatist. Now I believe having a quality Plan Z means I’m far less likely to ever be defeated! 

  • Jingle: Relaxing Stress Strategies - “Why having a Plan Z should mean you’ll never be dead”

++++++++++++++++++++

Odds and ends:

The goal of writing these blogs is not to have fun, but they are fun to write. The goal is to solve a problem I don’t have an answer to currently. This blog has morphed 3x times spawning two separate blogs! Here are some leftover odds and ends that I thought I’d share anyways! 

• Calm vs eustress vs distress (yes I didn’t talk about eustress vs distress above as felt it was unnecessary complicating of the ideas)

• Target: calm = 30%, eustress = 70%, distress = 0%

• Realistic expectation for reality: calm = 20%, eustress = 60%, distress = 20%

  • IMO don’t target for ‘realistic expectations’, there is always work that takes longer than expected and unplanned work that comes up. 

  • Basically things always come in over target, so aim below where you are wanting. 

• I’ve found that some distress is unavoidable, however extended periods of distress is not ok (more about this below). 

• Where is reality vs perception?

  • Does someone have a proper reflection of reality? I’ve found that problems come from overestimating and underestimating. You want the most accurate reflection of reality possible. 

  • You should have a view on where you are on the “Calm ⇔ Eustress ⇔ Distress” continuum. 

  • I’ve found that some people are chronic either over or under estimators of stress. 

    • Ie they constantly think the world is melting down and run around asking for help.

    • Ie they never ask for help, refusing to admit that anything could not be ok. 

  • Try to be a pragmatist, aka ‘do what works’. Don’t attach yourself to an ideology. Try to attach yourself to reality… and to help others if they have an incorrect view of reality. 

• You need to get to where stress is coming from: Environment vs Others vs Yourself

  • Note: environment - not everyone is cut out for every environment. A place for everything and everything in its place. Sometimes the kitchen is just too hot for someone. So get out. 

  • Ie you might think you want to do a job but the reality is you are not cut out for it. 

• If you believe you are in distress at work for more than ‘2 days to a week’ you need to tell someone. Not doing so it not ok. 

  • ‘Why 2 days to a week’? 

    • I’ve found that I can get worked up about things from time to time… but that if they aren’t really important they fade quickly. 

    • “Am I frustrated or am I experiencing frustration?” I now try ‘step back’ to look at whatever I’m experiencing and see what happens to it. If something is still kicking around after 2+ days it should definitely be addressed. 

  • We are here to help each other, we are stronger as a team (see “Esteem Team”).

  • Humans are not mind readers. I don’t believe it can be expected that others will realise you are eg in destress without you saying so. 

  • Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of courage. 

  • If you never ask for help you are not able to grow as much as you would be able to. 

• A manager needs to 80%+ of the time know 80%+ accurately how a direct report is feeling

  • What gets volunteered to a manager => This is relationship strength (however obviously you should have peer relationships as well, eg I’m saying manager here but doesn’t have to be)

    • Bad relationship => direct report volunteers nothing

    • Indifferent relationship => volunteers larges

    • Solid relationship => volunteer mediums+

    • Strong relationship => volunteer smalls+ (ie anything and everything… but remember don’t sweat the small things… and everything is a small thing)

  • What you can pick up from others => empathy capability

    • You should have a read of people (see “Empathy is built by practicing trying to understand others. You are not born good at empathizing.”

    • Taxonomy: 

      • People who have no read => pick up nothing

      • People who have solid read => pick up larges

      • People who have strong read => pick up mediums+. 

      • Picking up smalls isn’t possible! 

    • Comment

      • By read on someone what I’m saying is that I can hopefully figure out that ‘something is up’, but generally don’t know ‘what is up’. Then I’ll ask the person ‘how is everything going?’ etc. 

• What can you do to help others? See “Push vs Support vs Intervene vs Leave alone”

  • A manager should be looking for what to do: 

    • Push vs Support vs Intervene vs Leave alone

    • Intervene if reality is much worse than person believes AND after you have had repeated attempts to help

  • However the best people self regulate

    • For self

      • They have accurate self awareness

      • Have quality self regulation

      • Know when to ask for help AND what help to ask for (eg push me, eg support please)

    • For others

      • They are good at perspective taking and therefore accurately seeing what others are feeling

      • Are approachable

      • Good at empathizing (showing they understand and care)

      • Can help in a positive sum way (eg see “Positive Sum Pushback Approaches”)

  • Principle about when to Intervene

    • If we can confidently see the next 3 months will be ‘distress’ then it’s not optional that we will be taking something of your plate. “Stoicism to a fault is stupidity.” Not doing this is no good for you, no good for management and no good for the company. 

    • “Be happy about the help, don’t hinder help!”

• What is failure?

  • Success != delivering a project on time. 

  • Success = knowing that delivering a project on time will cause too much stress and saying you need help / can’t get it done. 

  • Success != getting a project done at quality with the same resourcing as other similar projects.  

  • Success = knowing that you aren’t comfortable that you have this and that you want extra help. 

  • Success = 1. Having a good plan (that you update appropriately) and 2. That you try to execute it with an appropriate amount of calm-eustress-distress. 

    • Success = good inputs. 

    • Success != some predetermined output. 

• As long as you have a Plan Z that is not death you shouldn’t stress.

  • Plan Z is sufficient if all goes to sh1t and we are still ok. Ie the worst outcome occurs and you / company / etc is not dead. 

  • “Why having a Plan Z means you’ll never be dead.”

  • There is always always a creative solution out of whatever problem you are in. 

    • 100% of things are solvable…

    • … but the sooner you get onto something the easier it is to solve. 

    • Eg sometimes you have to refund customers. I’ve had to do this. 

    • Eg sometimes you have to shut down a product. I’ve had to do this. 

    • Eg sometimes you need to renegotiate a contract and lower the amount you can pay someone so you don’t die. I’ve had to do this. 

    • Eg sometimes you have promised you will do a project to someone but circumstances change and you can no longer make good on your promise despite best efforts. You have to break your promise. It sucks and it hurts. I’ve had to do this. 

  • For Edrolo IMO there is a Plan Z for all mission critical parts of the business, no one says they are desired outcomes or will be fun, but we won’t die. 

  • Operating in ‘distress’ means worse execuation than operating in ‘eustress’. If you are distressing on your current plan then you’ll do it much worse than if you aren’t. So having a Plan Z:

    • means no existential distress

    • means no distress on current plan (aka Plan A) and as such better execution on current plan. 

• Are you having a reasonable response. Eg small stimulus vs large response

  • Model

    • Stimulus 

    • => response

    • => Plan A that is above sufficiency + Plan Z for what to do if everything goes to shit and things are ok. 

    • => sufficient+ action on Plan A

  • Comment 

    • If Plan A is sufficient+, action for Plan A is sufficient+ and you have a Plan Z that survival+ then no matter the outcome you shouldn’t be distressing. 

    • It doesn’t matter if Plan A doesn’t end well. If it’s not possible then and you had a good Plan A and executed well there was nothing more you could do. 

    • However you should distress if no Plan B, if no plan at all, or if you have Plan A above sufficiency but are not executing above sufficiency. 

• Expanding your ‘eustress’ operating window

  • First of all is ‘expanding eustress operating window’ a good idea? All else equal the more responsibility one can handle the bigger the difference one can deliver to the world. So I’d argue yes it is. 

  • ‘expanding eustress operating window’ => building resilience. 

  • You cultivate resilience like anything else. 

  • For me, the first time I do something I’m not very good at it. Then hopefully I slowly get better. 

  • So I’d bit off pieces of responsibility (not too much but also more than nothing). What might start as ‘100% of your eustress budget’ over time it goes down to ‘50% of eustress budget’ to ‘i can handle this in my sleep!’ Then put some more responsibility on your plate. And so the cycle continues… then one day you might have gone from an idea you work on in the nights to more than 100 employees! 

  • If you bite off more than you can chew, please ask for help! 

• Onwards, with appropriate downside investigation and protection (Plan Z), and upwards!