Slowing down, "founder mode", and last chance to sign up for my executive class

1. Most founders (including Graham) have never had a good manager, so they don't actually know how to manage effectively. That's why they're bad at hiring and managing executives, and have such a negative perception of "manager mode".
2. This essay made more sense when I realized it's a sales brochure for Y Combinator, not practical advice. It was fantastically successful at that, going viral and having founders say "That's how I feel!" It will likely lead to yet more applications to YC as a result, and therefore $$$ for Graham.

• Results and impact depend on direction. Early in our career, where our direction is given to us, our impact is dependent primarily on our effort (and the skillfulness of our manager in choosing a direction). Once we become more senior, we become responsible for setting the direction ourselves; in other words, we are evaluated based on results, not just effort.
• “It’s not how well you play the game, it’s deciding what game you want to play.” — Kwame Appiah. Graham Duncan shared this quote in his podcast interview with Tim Ferriss, and I love it as a concise articulation of why it's important to consciously choose your direction in your life and career. If you play the wrong game, you may be making yourself miserable despite ostensibly "winning" (as happened to me when I was burning out at Google). Choose carefully what you optimize for, and be willing to say no to games that don't work for you.
• When should you defer to others? Who is the expert here? Many of my clients want to stay humble and curious, and not be one of those self-promoting people who talks too much about themselves. They feel that if they do good work, the results will follow. Unfortunately, that is rarely true as you get more senior. Sometimes, you are the expert in the room and need to speak up, rather than listen to other people who know less than you. Communicating your expertise becomes a critical skill to help others find you and listen to you.

• I was on Rachael O'Meara's Pausecast, where I started off by leading a brief guided meditation to gain more insight into a challenge you are facing. We talked about the structured framework to get unstuck that I shared in my book as well as the career experiences I had that led me to those learnings. Check it out on YouTube or in audio form.
• Michal Juhas invited me to be part of his launch of his $500k CTO podcast, where he talks to CTOs and coaches about what separates successful CTOs. Our conversation was about the executive mindset that has been one of my themes this year, and you can check out the conversation on YouTube here.

• Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often by Darby Saxbe in the New York Times, where she suggests that "one of the best things parents can do — for ourselves as well as for our children — is to go about our own lives and tote our children along. You might call it mindful underparenting." This is something I've observed that's different about American parenting in recent decades compared to European parenting. American parents pride themselves on sacrificing themselves to center their children's interests and schedules. When we have traveled in Spain or Germany or Bulgaria, parents bring the kids along to meet up with their friends, and expect the kids to figure themselves out. There's a trust in their kids that Americans sometimes lack, and that trust is only built by giving kids enough space to learn by ignoring them.
• How to Say Hello, by James Buckhouse. I loved these tips on how to make a good first impression, including reorienting your mind towards curiosity, relaxing your face and voice, and straightening your spine to be more attentive. I particularly liked his advice to answer "What do you do?" with an "I believe" statement to start a conversation about ideas.
• City Life Is Too Lonely. Urban Planning Can Help, by Linda Poon in Bloomberg, aka "How to Design a City that Fights Loneliness". Poon outlines how American culture has embraced "a constellation of design decisions that ignore the value of social connections", including the rise of car-centric communities, the increase in technologies like self-checkout replacing human interactions, a decreased emphasis on in-person socialization, and a "focus and emphasis on individualism and independence and a desire to have separation". I liked the example she shared about how a park was redesigned to create space for small talk and facilitate more social interactions. No easy fixes here, but more design thinking around this will be necessary if we want to address the loneliness epidemic.